Beservei S-torags 




COEIDRIGHT DEPOStC ^-W^W ^ 



DEFENCE 



OF THE 



Mecklenburg Declara 
of Independence 



An Exhaustive Review 

of and Answer to All 

Attacks on the 

Declaration 



By JAMES H. MOORE 






RALEIGH : 
EDWAKIW & BROUGHTON PRINTING CO. 

1908 



. M 8 ) 



ueh«!?v of csNGaiss? 
MAY US 1908 

CLASSA ,Uc. No. 

2-0 73 2,2^ 

eoHt A. 



Copyright, 1908 
By JAMES H. MOORE 









TO MY WIFE, BESSIE H. 1 

a descendant of one of the signers of the Natioraal Declaration 

of Independence, and the perfect fIo\ver of the 

social graces of the old South grafted 

on the democracy of the mew, 

this defence of the men who made the Mecklenburg 

Declaration of Independence Ifrom 

unjust aspersion 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



PREFACE. 



In the pages to follow an attempt will be made not so much 
to present new facts as to marshal the old and new undisputed 
facts in logical order. The present phase of the Mecklenburg 
controversy may be compressed into very small compass. It 
is no longer disputed that a convention was held in May, 
1775, which adopted a paper concerning independence. The 
enemies of the Declaration say that the May 31st Resolves 
was that paper; that the "'convention" and the "committee" 
that ordered the "Resolves" signed were the same. An analy- 
sis is here made of the "Resolves" to show that these syste- 
matically and throughout distinguished between the "conven- 
tion" and the "committee" and designated them as distinct 
bodies. It is pointed out that Dr. Ephraim Brevard, the ad- 
mitted author of the paper adopted by the convention, and a 
practicing physician, could not have produced the May 31st 
Resolves, which were the work of a lawyer drilled in the 
details of the practice. The May 20 Declaration is shown 
to bear the ear-marks of Brevard throughout, while the May 
31st Resolves have not one of them. It is shown by contem- 
poraneous record evidence and oral testimony, both of the 
most positive character, that the Mecklenburgers did declare 
their independence as claimed. Aside from the positive tes- 
timony of witnesses directly and consciously interested in 
maintaining the truth of the Declaration, the positive and 
collateral evidences unearthed in the hundred years of the con- 
troversy have been most remarkable. The positive testimony 
of Traugott Bagge in the Moravian record is literally that of 
one rising from the dead. But it is in the study of such 
fragments as Brevard's "Instructions," September, 1776 ; 
"The Mecklenburg Censor," 1777, and the May 31st Re- 
solves, for the collateral bearings on the question they dis- 



VI PREFACE. 

close, that the student, keen after' the truth of the matter be- 
yond the scant records preserved, will find a lead of absorbing 
interest and something tinged with the glamour of romance. 
In the "Instructions" Brevard names the "Convention" in 
four different paragraphs as the familiar term for the body 
through which the people conducted their political legislation. 
He referred to the "committee" in one paragraph only, as a 
body to pass on claims against the public, which, he urged, 
should consist "of not less than nine men," the inference be- 
ing conveyed that he was displeased with the existing com- 
mittee, of which he was clerk, because of the smallness of its 
membership. "The Mecklenburg Censor" also mentions the 
"Convention" and "the assembly," describing them as being 
"harangued" by Hezekiah Alexander and Waightstill Avery, 
but he nowhere refers to the "committee," which evidently 
had not yet developed the importance it subsequently attained 
as the provisional government of the county while the war 
continued. 

Dr. Brevard was the intellectual and popular leader of the 
county at the opening of this ]3eriod. College-bred and tal- 
ented, he was strongly imbued with the Scotch-Irish Presbyte- 
rianism that formed the religion of the settlers. To him they 
naturally turned to express their views. He wrote their popu- 
lai- ]:»apers. The witnesses all agree that he was the author 
of the Declaration, or of the chief paper adopted by the con- 
vention. The "Instructions," conceded to have been written 
by him, breathe throughout the spirit and employ repeatedly 
the marked popular phrases of the Declaration as preser^^ed 
to us by John McKnitt Alexander. On the other hand, there 
is not a sentence of the May 31st Eesolves that suggests the 
author of the "Instructions." 

The "Instructions" bids the county's representatives vote 
that ""N"orth Carolina is, and of right ought to he, a free and 
i^^i»f€ AH! l! ^i t State, is vested with the powers of legislation. 



PREFACE. • Vll 

capable of making laws to regulate all the internal police" 
etc. The Declaration says, "We do hereby declare ourselves 
a free and independent people, are, and of right ought to be, 
a sovereign and self-governing Association/' etc. 

The ^"Iiistrnctions" say, "You are instructed to vote * * * 
for the future security of all the Rights, Privileges and Pre- 
rogatives of the State and the private, natural and unaliena- 
ble Rights of the constituent members," etc. And again, 
"You are instructed to assent and consent to the establishment 
of the Christian religion * * '"^ and that the full and peace- 
able enjoyment thereof be secured, to all and every constituent 
member of the State as their unalienable Rigid as Freemen," 
etc. The Declaration says, ''That whosoever directly or indi- 
rectly abetted * * * the * * * dangerous invasion of our rights 
* * * is an enemy to this County — to America — and to the 
inherent and inalienable rights of man.'' And again, "We 
do hereby ordain and adopt * " ^ all, each and every of 
our former laws, wherein, nevertheless, the Crowa of Great 
Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, 
immunities or authority therein." And again, "It is also 
further decreed, that all, each and every military officer," etc. 
And again, "To the maintenance of Avhich independence, civil 
& religious," etc. 

Not only do the two papers employ the same marked 
phrases, but they are informed throughout with the same 
fierce spirit of civil and religious liberty. 

Treating of determining the genuineness of an author's 
writings by internal evidence merely, Hugh Miller says: "We 
know, for instance, that the Doctor [Dr. Johnson] wrote the 
English Dictionary, not only because no other man in the 
world at the time could have written it, but because he affixed 
his name to the title page. We know, too, that he wrote some 
of the best of Lord Chatham's earlier speeches, just because 
he said so, and pointed out the very garret in Fleet -street in 



Vlll PREFACE. 

which thej had been written. But it is from other data we 
conclude that, during his period of obscurity and distress, he 
wrote prefaces for the Gentlemen's Magazine, for some six 
or seven years together, — data derived exclusively from a dis- 
criminating criticism ; and his claim to the authorship of Tay- 
lor's Sermons rests solely on the vigorous character of the 
thinking displayed in these compositions, and the marked pe- 
culiarities of their style." 

In the same way we may be morally certain that Waight- 
still Avery wrote the May 31st Resolves, because there was 
no other man in Mecklenburg County qualified to write them, 
and that Dr. Brevard wrote the Declaration not only because 
the witnesses said he wrote it, but because of "the marked 
peculiarities" of its "style" and the identity of its temper 
with that of his other known writings. 

If there is anything in internal evidence the author of the 
"Instructions" wrote the Declaration, and Waightstill Avery, 
the lawyer, who, "The Censor" said, "any law can quickly 
make," wrote the May 31st memorial to congress and the 
digest of laws for the county's government that was incor- 
porated in it. In the popular assembly Brevard was su- 
preme ; but when it came to framing the civil code, resort was 
inevitably had to one skilled in the law. There was but one 
such person in the county. Waightstill Avery was distrusted 
as a popular leader because of his profession. "The Censor" 
and "The Editor," both of whom make manifest their inti- 
mate acquaintance with the people of Mecklenburg, abun- 
dantly voice this prejudice. Brevard himself, in the "Instruc- 
tions," recommends that "no practising lawyer * * * shall be 
a representative of the people in Congress or Convention." 
But Avery, the lawyer, was indispensable in framing the 
county government. He drew up the May 31st Resolves, be- 
ginning the paper with a preamble, as he begun his draft of 
the charter for Queen's college, and as his professional cus- 



PREFACE. IX 

torn was. The teehnique of the lawyer is evident in every 
line. There is none of the crudeness in his legal diction, such 
as marks the layman in Brevard's "Instructions." The paper 
is a smooth, cold, clear-cut, unimpassioned statement of the 
situation in the country, giving rise to the necessity for pro- 
viding a form of government to fit the conditions. In the 
entire document there is no suggestion of the fierce personal 
ardor for civil and religious liberty that admittedly animated 
this Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlement beyond any other 
in the colony or the country, and which pervaded both the 
Declaration and the "Instructions." Even the express refer- 
ence to the county's independent status in Resolve XVI deals 
with it as a fact accomplished, the only concern of the drafts- 
man being to draw a statutoiy enactment providing a method 
of procedure and imposing a penalty for the violation of the 
will of the people. 

It is impossible that Avery could have been the leader and 
exponent of the liberty party in Mecklenburg in 1775, which 
he must have been if the May olst Resolves were the "true 
Declaration." The genuine exju-ession of the Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterian spirit is found in the Declaration, the "Instruc- 
tions," and in Judge Alexander Martin's charge to the grand 
jury at Salisbury, June 1, 1775. Avery was of Hungarian 
origin and of immediate English descent. He could not have 
inherited the Scotch-Irish prejudices that animated his fellow 
citizens like a second nature. It is very evident that he was 
not an enthusiastic liberty advocate in the early '70s of the 
Revolutionary period, if even his judgment approved of the 
movement. Lyman Draper says: "In 1771 he [Avery] was 
made a prisoner by the Regulators at Yadkin Ferry, and car- 
ried to their camp in the woods. They gave him a flogging 
and soon set him at liberty. When the great war came he 
was prepared to meet it. In such an atmosphere as Meck- 
lenburg, he could only learn to breathe the purest sentiments 
of patriotism." 



PKEFACE. 



But despite his lack of congenital sympathy with the mass 
of his fellow citizens, his practical mind and training, to- 
gether with his talent for diplomacy, placed him in a position, 
after the white heat of patriotic fervor had somewhat spent 
itself, to fashion the metal in the shape, to some degree, his 
judgment dictated. That this served his purposes the sequel 
shows, but that it did not please Dr. Brevard and those he 
represented, and ''The Mecklenburg Censor" and "The Edi- 
tor" and those for whom they spoke, as well, is easily to be 
gleaned by a critical study of their productions. 

"The Mecklenburg Censor," which will be found in the 
appendix, affords us an intimate introduction to the Mecklen- 
burgers, for which a more dignified and stated history of them 
could have given us no compensatory substitute. Of course, 
the colors of the clever poetaster are laid on with poetic li- 
cense and exaggeration, but we recognize through his extrava- 
gance a realistic flesh and blood folk, with internal bickerings 
and jealousies, and not the ideal people the critics would have 
us believe them, incapable of perpetrating an inconsistency, 
in order to strip them of the credit of having made the first 
formal declaration of independence. After the failure of 
Captain Jack's mission to congress, they so far yielded to the 
pressure brought to whip them into line with the prevailing 
policy both in the colony and in the country to formally open 
and close their court in the king's name. This was equally 
inconsistent whether it was the Declaration or the May 31st 
Resolves that was adopted by the May convention. But only 
the most trivial matters, and few of them were entertained in 
the court, while affairs of moment, such as the case of Dunn 
and Boote, were heard by ''The Committee," in its politico- 
judicial capacity prescribed for it in the May 31st Resolves 
as a revolutionary tribunal. "The Committee" did not sit in 
the court-house, but held its meetings, Alexander tells 'us, "at 
Charlotte, at Col. James Harris's, at Colonel Phifer's, alter- 



PREFACE. XI 



nately, one week at each place. It was a civil court founded 
on military process. Before this judicature all suspicious 
persons were made to appear, were formally tried and ban- 
ished, or continued under guard." The records of this, the 
real court in 1775, were not kept in the court-house, but were 
among the Revolutionary minutes which were burned with 
Alexander's house in 1800. 

Aside from such corroborative details as these, it is shown 
in the pages that follow, by positive contemporaneous record 
evidence and oral testimony, as before stated, that the Meck- 
lenburgers did declare their independence. Every argument 
brought by the enemies of the Declaration to throw discredit 
on the document handed down by the Mecklenburg fathers as 
the true paper is met fully and exhaustively, and the author 
trusts as satisfactorily to others as to himself. 

The writer is especially desirous to do full justice to Mr. 
William Henry Hoyt, in answer to whose work on the Meck- 
lenburg Declaration the following chapters are so largely de- 
voted, and whose facts, as far as they go, are accepted in 
every instance. Mr. Hoyt has done the friends of the Decla- 
ration more service by the presentation of many facts and 
documents hitherto unknown or neglected than he has dam- 
aged their cause by his argument. The balance of obligation 
is in liis favor. With the facts before him the reader can 
judge for himself. James H. Moore. 

Macon, Ga., November 28, 1907. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE MECKLENBURG CONTROVERSY. 

Story of the independence convention retold. News of the Lexington 
battle had arrived. The county resolves on independence. Dr. 
Ephraim Brevard, chairman of the committee that drafted the 
resolutions. ''But in a few days, (after cooling)" a select com- 
mittee met and memoralized Congress. Captain James Jack goes 
express to Philadelphia with all the papers. Congress deep in 
the "Olive Branch" petition repudiating the charge that the colo- 
nies are aiming at independence. Jack's mission and papers sup- 
pressed. He returned with the message that they were ''premature." 
He probably carried back with him Caswell's circular letter bid- 
ding the people "look to the reigning monarch of Britain as your 
rightful and laAvful sovereign." Mecklenburgers charged with in- 
consistency for modifying their course. John McKnitt Alexander 
made copies of the proceedings. Records burned in 1800. Alex- 
ander left two copies of the Declaration. The Declaration pub- 
lished in the Raleigh Register in 1819. The controversy begins. 
Discovery of the May 31st Resolves. Claimed to be the "true 
Declaration." Present phase of the controversy. \Miat will be 
shown. Pages, 1-15. 

CHAPTER II. 

WHO FIRST SET THE BALL ROLLING ? 

Jealous contention as to the first movement for independence (1818-19). 
Mecklenburg's claims advanced. Nathaniel Macon writes for in- 
formation. Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, in a letter to Con- 
gressman Davidson, furnished an account of the event "copied 
from papers left by his father." His account published in The 
Raleigh Register. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, 
denounced it as "spurious" and "fictitious." Jefferson's letter not 
made public until 1829. The Legislature, (1830-31) investigated 
the event and declared its authenticity established. Pages, 16-25. 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES OF THE MAY 31ST RESOLVES. 

ColoBtel Thomas Polk called the convention. Inference: the committee 
of safety had not yet been created to perform this duty. The 
Declaration was drafted by Dr. Ephraim Brevard, a physician, 
without legal education or experience. The May 3Ist Resolves 
were written by a lawyer familiar with the practice. This paper 
contains a masterly code of the civil procedure. Dr. Brevard 
could not have produced it. The Resolves expressly testify to 
the "convention" system in the county. They clearly define the 
distinction between the "convention" and the "committee." The 
"convention" was a representative and judicial body, and the 
'committee" was the administrative and executive head of the 
government, with extra-judicial discretion over political offenders. 
The jurisdiction of each body is accurately stated and its re- 
spective powers and functions assigned. Only a lawyer could 
have drafted the May 31st Resolves. Not the paper drafted by 
Dr. Brevard and adopted by the May convention. Waightstill 
Avery the probable author. Pages, 26-40. 

CHAPTER IV. 

QUESTION OF PLAGIARISM. 
All the words and phrases used by the National Declaration and the 
Mecklenburg Declaration in common shown to have been employed 
in state papers of the Revolutionary period before the National 
Declaration was written. They were hackneyed expressions, most 
of which were used by Dr. Brevard, without quotation marks, in 
his "Instructions," September, 1776, a paper of undisputed authen- 
ticity. Pages, 41-53. 

CHAPTER V. 

CHARGE OF INCONSISTENCY. 

Course of the Mecklenburgers subsequent to the Declaration made 
clear by a study of their environments and the history of the 
period. Pages, 54-73. 

CHAPTER VI. 

JOHN McIOsTITT ALEXANDER'S ROUGH NOTES. 

Alexander's statements verified by every item of material evidence 
that has been brought to light in the nearly hundred years of the 
controversy. Pages, 74-91. 



CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER VII. 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES OF THE MAY 20 DECLARATION. 

The Declaration is strongly marked with verbiage and sentiment pecu- 
liar to 1775 which no mere forger of 1800 could have reproduced. 
Its language is not the language of Jefferson's paper, except in a 
few phrases in common use at the period. Ear-marks of Brevard 
are written through and through it as compared with his "In- 
structions," produced a year later. The May 31st Resolves have 
none of the Brevard ear-marks, but show ear-marks ot Waight- 
still Avery. Pages, 92-107. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

DAVIE COPY AND CHARGES OF FORGERY. 

The "Davie Copy" was in the handwriting of John McKnitt Alexan- 
der. It was the same with the paper in the unknown handwriting 
from which Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander copied his account. 
Governor Stokes, Governor Swain and the legislative committee 
vouched for this in 1831 and challenged the world to witness it. 
Governor Swain in 1858 again said, "'the paper is unquestionably 
genuine. I have it before me, in the well-known handwriting of 
John McKnitt Alexander." Prof. Phillips, who charged Dr. Alex- 
ander with introducing the "Alexandrian measure," said the two 
papers were identical with respect to the resolutions. Hoyt says 
Phillips's case against Dr. Alexander is based on "flimsy evi- 
dence." Charge of forgery renewed by Mr. A. S. Salley, Jr. 
Studies in garbling and groundless abuse. Pages, 108-120. 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE RECORD EVIDENCES. 

These are of two classes: direct and indirect. May 20 Declaration. 
May 31st Resolves. Dr. Ephraim Brevard's "Instructions," 1776. 
"The Mecklenburg Censor" and "The Editor's" commentaries, 
1777. Traugott Bagge's MS., buried in the Moravian records, 
1783, brought to light in 1904. In 1783 he recorded the story of 
the Declaration in precisely the same words that Alexander stated 
it in 1800. Jos. Pearson's toast, Raleigh Register, 1808. School- 
boy's declamation, printed in The Minerva, Raleigh, N. C, 1809. 
The fact of the Declaration was not disputed prior to 1819. Gov- 
ernor Josiah Martin's dispatches, addresses and proclamation. 
Pages, 121-137. 



XVI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 

Fourteen reputable witnesses certified to having been present at the 
convention that declared independence. General Joseph Graham's 
recollection of the abdication argument claimed to be peculiar to 
the May 31st Resolves. The argument was made in the convention 
after the committee on resolutions had retired and was trium- 
phantly answered before it returned. The argument had weight 
with the committee of safety at the May 31st meeting in shap- 
ing the memorial to Congress. The May 31st paper was a mere 
sequence to the May 20 Declaration, and the recalling of the fea- 
tures of both papers establishes the reliability of the testimony. 
Simeson's reference to the appointment of the committe on mili- 
tary stores the only other point of apparent difficulty. After the 
lapse of forty-four years he confused the reading of two papers. 
Pages, 138-146. 

APPENDIX. 
The Mecklenburg Censor. Pages, 147-167. 



DEFENCE OF THE 
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. 

CHAPTER I. 



THE MECKLENBURG CONTROVERSY. 



"Och, aye, Tarn Polk declared independence lang before 
anybody else." 

The writer recently had some controversy in the columns 
of The Macon, Ga., Telegraph concerning the Mecklenburg 
Declaration of Independence with Mr. William Henry Hoyt, 
A.M., author of the latest and completest work on this most 
famous of American historical controversies. The writer had 
published a "reply" to the critics generally of the Mecklen- 
burg Declaration and Mr. Hoyt made rejoinder thereto. Mr. 
Hoyt has returned again to the attack in The Telegraph's col- 
lunns with a further answer. In the meantime he has favor- 
ed the writer with a copy of his work which the latter had 
not yet seen and which he has read with unmeasured delight. 
It is a volume of 284 pages, replete with interest from cover 
to cover to such as have followed or who may be interested in 
following this nearly century old dispute. There are eleven 
chapters, exclusive of preface and appendix, beginning with 
"The History of the Controversy," and dealing in turn with 
"The May 31st Resolves," which the author styles "The True 
Declaration;" a comparison of "The Rival Declarations," 
"The Lost Cape Fear Mercury," "Capt. Jack's Mission to 
Philadelphia," "The Salisbury Records," "An Accumulation 
of Miracles," dealing critically with the alleged inconsistent 
conduct of some of the leading Mecklenburg actors after the 
May 20 Declaration ; "Origin of the Myth," by which term 
the author designates the May 20 Declaration; "The Davie 
Copy," wherein he makes a critical study of the copy of the 
May 20 Declaration and statement concerning it in John Mo- 



2 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Knitt Alexander's well known handwriting, which the old 
secretary deposited with Gen. William E.. Davie; "The Mar- 
tin and Garden Copies," and finally "The Testimony of the 
Witnesses" of the Mecklenburg convention which adopted and 
promulgated the Declaration. 

Mr. Hoyt collates and places in interesting juxtaposition 
some original papers and exhibits hitherto inaccessible, to- 
gether with many other material documents, and he adduces 
all the evidence, new and old, pro and con bearing on the sub- 
ject. Especially is this noteworthy of the reproduction in 
fac simile of John McKnitt Alexander's rough notes, copy of 
Declaration and statment of the events leading up to its adop- 
tion. Mr. Hoyt states the history of the dispute and the 
known facts bearing upon it justly, fairly and, we believe, 
fully. Had the author contented himself with this, leaving 
the reader to weigh and decide for himself, uninfluenced by 
the argument of the narrator, his would have been a most 
admirable work in all respects as it is a most admirable work 
in many respects. 

As it is Mr. Hoyt at the outset designates the May 31st Re- 
solves the "The True Declaration" and dubs the May 20 
Declaration a "myth", and while nothing is overlooked or 
hidden that can throw light on the controversy, inevitably the 
circumstances which give color to his theory are stressed and 
emphasized to that end and all testimony of a doubtful char- 
acter is resolved in its favor. The "overwhelming" testi- 
mony of the eyewitnesses to the fact of the mass meeting of 
the Mecklenburgers and of their declaration of their indepen- 
dence amid the shouts, huzzas and hat-throwing of half the 
men of the county is met with the argument that the May 
31st Resolves are so much like a declaration of independence, 
constituting, in fact, a "virtual declaration of independence," 
the author says, (p 28) that these good people whose honesty 
no one dreams of impeaching, mistook the "Resolves" for a 
declaration. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 6 

Not only were they deceived, we are told, but Governor 
Martin, Mr. Peter Force and many other "intelligent crit- 
ics" called the "Resolves" a declaration of independence. 
Later on, however, the author tells us, (p. 104) the belief 
that the Resolves "constituted a declaration of independence" 
was "erroneous." This reversible action of the argument is 
rendered necessary to sustain the "myth" hypothesis and to 
support the proposition that there was not a "conscious move- 
ment in the colonies having independence as its aim," as 
early as May, 1775, which the author, in his preface, says is 
one of the matters of "chief historical importance" concerned. 
For it is plain if the "Resolves" constitute a virtual declara- 
tion of independence," as the author says (p. 28) he gives 
away his case at the outset. 

The author's leaning in favor of his theory does not betray 
him into injustice of statement, and despite the trend of his 
argument which does betray him into contradictions through- 
out, the book is one which the believer in the May 20 Declara- 
tion will pursue to the end with delight. 

Reading there all the known facts of the controversy, in 
the light of the history of the period as we now know it, we 
see the story of the Declaration unfold in its true relations to 
the times, and many circumstances that perplexed true be- 
lievers of the event as handed down by their fathers become 
readily decipherable and understood. We observe that the 
researches of the antiquarians cannot disturb the dust gath- 
ered upon this originally neglected event without bringing 
more and more to view the large and significant character and 
certainty of the deed of the Mecklenburgers. We see unfold 
a story of absorbing pathetic and patriotic interest. How 
completely every part of it dovetails with the rest ! 

We see the Mecklenburgers stirred with excitement during 
the winter and spring of 1774-75, holding a number of public 
meetings and discussing several different papers. We see 



4' DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

the scholars and more learned meet first in the classic 
"Queen's Museum" academy and debate the merits of Great 
Britain's tyranny. We see later the Mecklenhurgers called 
to meet in their several military districts to choose and send 
each company two delegates to a general meeting to be held 
on the 19th of May. We see the delegates assemble on the 
day fixed in larger numbers than anticipated and half the 
men of the county beside, attracted doubtless by the stirring 
news from Lexington which is now generally known in the 
colony. 

We see them put aside the more moderate papers looking to 
an independent plan of government framed before the news 
ai*rived from Lexington, and adopting a more drastic and 
ringing declaration, drafted by Dr. Ephraim Brevard, re- 
nouncing absolutely allegiance to the monarch who has wan- 
tonly shed the blood of his subjects. "But in a few days," 
May 31st obviously, "(after cooling)" in the language of 
John McKnitt Alexander's rough but illuminating notes, we 
seje "a considerable part of the committeemen convened" 
again. We see them in this cooled state reflecting that their 
step is a bold one. Reflecting that as so small an integral 
portion not only of the country, but of the province, they are 
dependent on the sympathy and co-operation of others in what 
they have done. We see the more astute and politic suggest- 
ing that they must address themselves to the provincial and 
general Congresses with arguments that will commend them- 
selves to these bodies, that are far from being so forward in 
this matter of independence. We see them address them- 
selves to the delicate task of presenting it in such shape to the 
general Congress as to win the sanction of that body. 

They adopt the arguments which were used to meet the ob- 
jections of the more conservative before the news from Lex- 
ington precipitated their "rash act" as some of the recalci- 
trants had already called it, according to Alexander's notes. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 5 

The king, they argued, had abdicated. He had "declared the 
colonies out of his protection" and therefore they were ab- 
solved from allegiance. "When protection was withdrawn 
allegiance ceased." This line of argument the committeemen 
now adopted in their memorial to Congi'ess. And so they 
framed a preamble, that, "Whereas, by an address presented 
to his majesty * * * the American colonies are de- 
clared to be in a state of actual rebellion we conceive that all 
laws and commissions * * * ai"e annulled and vacated, 
therefore, (1) that all such granted by the Crown are null and 
void; (2) that all legislative and executive powers are vested 
in the Continental and Provincial Congresses, and none other 
does or can exist, and, (3) that as Congress has not yet pro- 
vided laws, (4) the inhabitants of this county meet and elect 
their own officers who shall exercise their offices INDEPEIsT- 
DENT OF THE CROWN OF GREAT BRITAIN, and, 
until other laws are made for us by the Continental and Pro- 
vincial Congresses, to which alone we owe allegiance, this 
county will be governed by the following by-laws and regula- 
tions — And then followed sixteen additional resolves, com- 
prising an admirable plan of internal government for the 
county, to which all are in terms obligated on the penalty 
that any who shall liereafter receive a commission from the 
Crown, or attempt to exercise any such, shall be deemed an 
enemy to his country and dealt with as provided in Resolve 
XVI. 

We see them after having executed this wonderfully clever 
state paper to fit the situation, order it signed by the clerk, 
Ephraim Brevard, for the committee, combining it in a roll 
with "a Copy of all resolutions and sd Laws," including the 
declaration made by the people of the county on the 20th of 
May, "and a letter to our 3 members there," as Alexander 
tells us in his crude but enlightening notes, and preparing the 
whole to go express to Philadelphia by the hand of Ci\]^f. 



6 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Jack, who has been engaged in the meantime to be the bearer 
of these to Congress. 

We see Capt. Jack after making preparations for his long 
journey, "set out the following month," on his embassy, "say 
about June," as he tells us in his certificate. We see him 
reach Salisbury, 44 miles away, when the "general court" is 
in session, and we find by the records that the court sat from 
the 1st to the 6th in the month of June, 1775. We see the 
court suspend its proceedings to hear the papers Capt. Jack is 
carrying read publicly. We follow the messenger to Phila- 
delphia, where he places his papers in the hands of the North 
Carolina delegates. We place him there on the day that Gen. 
Washington left to take command of the Northern army, 
which was the 23d of June. 

And now commences the century-long pathos and tragedy 
of this over true story. We see Capt. Jack the herald of 
independence — the trumpeter of one of the greatest epochal 
movements of the ages — the first storm bird flying before the 
mighty upheaval of liberty that is brewing in the bosom of 
the American wilds wandering about Philadelphia doubtless 
neglected and alone. He had come on a high mission from 
his people bearing the tidings of the deed on which they had 
so generously, rashly staked their fate and fortunes and in- 
voking the Congress's sanction of that deed. What was the 
reception of the messenger and what was the Congress's an- 
swer ? What, in fact, was the tone and temper of the body 
to which he presented himself on such a mission ? 

When Capt. Jack reached Philadelphia Congress was 
obsessed with the task of formulating the famous "Olive 
Branch" petition to George III, the chief object of which 
was to disabuse the mind of the King of the idea that the 
colonies were aiming at independence. The petition was 
"almost fulsome in its tone," says Elson, one of the more re- 
cent historians. It said: 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 7 

We are accused of aiming at independence, but how is this accusation 
supported ? By the allegations of your ministers, not by our actions. 

"In defereiice to his Majesty, who would not recognize 
Congress as a legal body, the members had signed their hum- 
ble petition, not as a body, but separately, as individuals, re- 
presenting their respective colonies." And to conciliate the 
King they sent the petition to him by the hand of a Tory. 

It was upon a body thus concerned for the success of their 
representations that Capt. Jack obtruded with his untimely, 
inflammable papers, filled with declarations of independence 
and schemes for popular government. 

Can we wonder that he was ignored ? Can we not readily 
understand why his arrival and the Mecklenburg papers were 
not even noted in the Journal ? 

Why was this ''flaming declaration" never heard of? asks 
Mr. Jefferson more than two decades later. 

"How is it possible that this paper should have been con- 
cealed from me to this day ?" John Adams asked. 

And Mr. Hoyt, making a critical study of the files of the 
Philadelphia papers of the period, finds no escape from the 
conclusion that "the printers were requested not to copy" the 
Resolves, and that "At all events the May 31 resolves [and 
by a parity of reasoning the Declaration also] were sup- 
pressed in Philadelphia." 

"Had it been communicated to me in the time of it," John Adams 
writes to Mr. Jefferson forty-four years after, "I know if you do not 
know that it would have been printed in every Whig newspaper upon 
this continent. You know if I had possessed it, I would have made the 
hall of Congress echo and re-echo with it fifteen months before your 
Declaration of Independence." 

And Jefferson, in replying to Adams, says : 

"Armed with this bold example, would not you have addressed our 
timid brethren in peals of thunder on their tardy fears?" 

And the informed historian of today with calm assurance 
answers: "No, gentlemen, neither of you would have done 



8 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

anything of the sort. You would have suppressed it just as 
those of your colleagues, to whose attention it was brought, 
and your body as a whole did suj)press it, because if you 
had not suppressed it you could not have signed the 'Olive 
Branch.' " 

Doubtless Adams and Jefferson resting in their old age 
from their state-creating labors, had in mind the time four 
months later when the vindictive George III declined to re- 
ceive their petition or their messenger and literally spurned 
them from the foot of the throne ! If the ill-fated Jack could 
have happened in on them at that time with either the May 
20 declaration or the May 31 Resolves, or both, what a dif- 
ferent reception would have been his ! How unquestioningly 
would the fame of Mecklenburg have been perpetuated in 
song and history without any being so bold as to dispute her 
primacy. 

We have seen, as Mr. Hoyt clearly shows, that particular 
pains were taken to keep the printed report of the Mecklen- 
burg proceedings out of the Philadelphia papers and the Jour- 
nal of the Continental Congress is pointedly silent about the 
express with papers from Mecklenburg County, K. C. Ap- 
parently, it was left to Caswell, Hooper and Hewes, the North 
Carolina delegates, to manage the difficult situation their con- 
stituents had created. The delegates named returned by 
Capt. Jack to the Mecklenburg committee a letter praising 
them for their "zeal," but informing them they were "pre- 
mature" and recommending "patience," "perseverance," etc. 
We see Capt. Jack, the harbinger of liberty, arrived four 
months too soon, take the back trail to the settlement on the 
frontier, where alone, in all America, the people dared talk 
openly of and declare their independence, if the concensus of 
the historians and Mr. Hoyt is to be believed. 

Nay, the author shows to a moral certainty almost that the 
North Carolina delegation in Congress actually sent back to 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 9 

the North Carolina committees by Jack a circular letter which 
Caswell had written just before Jack arrived dated, June 
June 19, 1775, and signed by his colleagues and himself, in 
which they bade the North Carolinians 

"look to the reigning monarch of Britain as your rightful and lawful 
sovereign: dare every danger and difficulty in support of his person, 
crown and dignity, and consider every man a Traitor to his King who 
infringing the rights of his American subjects attempts to invade those 
glorious principles which placed him on the Throne and must preserve 
him there." 

Copies of this paper were sent "to the western counties [of 
North Carolina] during the last week of June 1775, by a 
man who was going from Philadelphia to Mecklenburg Coun- 
ty — -in all probability Capt. Jack," says Mr, Iloyt. Capt. 
Jack was "a man who was going from Philadelphia to Meck- 
lenburg County" "during the last week of June, 1775," and 
whether sent by him or another Caswell's circular letter would 
have reached Mecklenburg about the time Jack returned 
there. 

We see Jack return to the Mecklenburg Committee with 
these discouraging messages and we note the effect in Alex- 
ander's terse tragic note : 

"We were PREMATURE [premature underscored in the original]. 
Congress never had our laws on their table for discussion, though sd 
copy was left with them by Capt. Jack." [All the last sentence under- 
scored from the word "on."] 

We read this pathetic story and we are coolly and critically 
asked, 131 years after by the closet critics, why, if these 
people declared their independence, May 20, 1775, they did 
such and such things inconsistent with such a declaration 
within a few months afterward. And on this conclusive ar- 
gument we are told (because the May 31st Resolves have 
first to be used to bludgeon off the Declaration and then be 
disposed of in their turn), that a "temporary declaration" 
was indeed made and never recalled — a declaration "in 



10 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

effect/' ''subject to a contingent limitation," which contin- 
gency never occurred to defeat it. We are asked to believe 
that the conduct of the Mecklenburgers, which was incon- 
sistent with the unconditional declaration was in entire keep- 
ing and accord with the contingent paper, which differed from 
the other only in the particular that, by its terms, it might 
have been defeated, but never was. 

To return. We see the committee modify their course 
somewhat to conform to the urgent wishes of the North Caro- 
lina delegates. The justices "continued to hold their quarter- 
ly sessions in Charlotte as usual," says Alexander, but they 
created another court presided over by a select body of the 
Committee Men, which took jurisdiction of all political of- 
fenses and offenders, the records of which were not kept in 
the court house. (The records that were kept in the court 
house were of petty cases and few in number. ) We see some 
of the delegates to the Mecklenburg convention later signing 
the "Test Oath" in the provincial Congress at Hillsborough 
in order to align themselves with the policy adopted by the 
Nortli Carolina Congress. We are told that these things 
prove the Mecklenburgers did not declare their independence 
May 20, 17Y5, but go to show that they did "virtually" de- 
clare independence May 31st, 1775, and were never again un- 
der control of the British Government. 

In face of the chilly reception with which the Declaration 
met on all hands it would have been strange if it had not suf- 
fered some discount even among those who gave utterance to 
it in the ardor of the occasion. But in one faithful heart 
appreciation of the document and of the event never flagged. 
John McKnitt Alexander, tbe Secretary of the May 20 Con- 
vention, religiously preserved and cherished the records of it. 

He made copies of the Declaration and procedings from 
time to time. One copy he sent in 1787 to New York to Dr. 
Hugh Williamson, who was to write a history of North Care- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 11 

lina. After his house was burned in 1800 and the original 
records with it, he jotted down his recollection of the events, 
including headings of the Declaration, in crude unfinished 
notes — mere running memoranda — without pretense at style 
or perfection. With homely, housewifely care he ''sewed" 
this historical statement ''up in a sheet of paper on which was 
written the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence," 
"stitching" them together. These he filed away with other 
valued literature treating of ''liberty," dating from 1774. 

One copy of the Declaration he made in his own handwrit- 
ing and deposited it with Gen. William R. Davie, the most 
eminent man in this section with whom, he assured himself 
and others, the document would be safe. 

We hear of him from time to time, discoursing to his 
friends and neighbors on the merit and significance of their 
conduct in 1775. We find him instilling the story of its glory 
in the mind of his youthful grandson, James Wallis. We 
hear the boy declaim a piece with the Declaration for its 
theme at the Sugar Creek Academy Commencement, June 1, 
1809, without any one to gainsay its truth. We see the dec- 
lamation, asserting that the Mecklenburgers had "solemnly 
entered into and published a full and determined declaration 
of independence, renouncing forever all allegiance," etc., pub- 
lished in the Ealeigh Minerva of August 10, 1809, with none 
at that early date to challenge the accuracy of the statement 
when the truth concerning it must have been generally known. 

We see the Mecklenburg Declaration accepted without 
(|uestion for another decade until 1819, after John McKnitt 
Alexander and other immediate actors had passed from the 
stage of affairs. We see the subject then revived in Wash- 
ington in connection with the contention which broke out at 
the capital as to which colony and people first started the 
movement for independence. In response to the inquiry set 
on foot by Senator Nathaniel Macon, Dr. Joe McKnitt Alex- 



12 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

tinder, son of the old secretary, furnished his father's papers 
and Senator Macon sent them to the Raleigh Register for 
publication. In reply to doubts raised at this juncture the 
affidavit of eyewitnesses in testimony of the event were ob- 
tained and published establishing the fact of the convention 
and its proceedings and closing the mouth of criticism. 

We see the controversy break out again in 1830, on the 
publication of Mr. Jefferson's works containing the corres- 
pondence between Mr. Adams and himself in 1819 on the sub- 
ject. We see the Legislature of North Carolina take the 
matter up and appoint a committee through which it 
thoroughly investigated the facts and solemnly recorded its 
finding of the truth of the matter, once more closing the 
mouth of the doubters. 

Later still we see the records of the Revolutionary period 
unearthed, bringing to light the contemporaneous testimony 
of the royal governor, Josiah Martin, denouncing the Meck- 
lenburgers for "most traitorously declaring the entire dissolu- 
tion" of the King's laws and government. And then we set- 
tle down to the conviction that the controversy is settled for 
all time. 

Vain hope! We see the May 31st Resolves "dug out of 
the old files of papers printed in June, 1775, and used as a 
lever to overthrow the Declaration instead of being accepted 
as a corroborating circumstance. The latest contribution to 
this new phase of the controversy is the admirable and ex- 
haustive work by Mr. Hoyt wherein he collates and assembles 
much of the original documentary evidence which has not 
heretofore been accessible to the public. 

Looking calmly over the ground one is amazed at the per- 
sistent and inveterate animosity that has pursued the fame of 
the first stroke contributed to the blows that severed the 
bonds of the mother country in the movement for indepen- 
dence. Resented, ignored and suppressed, at first, as an un- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 13 

timely if not ill-bred place of gaucherie, the credit investing 
it by reason of the subsequent successful assertion of inde- 
pendence, which was by no means so popular a proposition 
while the result was in doubt, has been persistently disputed 
and combatted at every turn and whenever and wherever a 
peg has been found on which to hang a doubt. 

In the chapters to follow the writer will attempt to demon- 
strate from the known facts of the controversy, undisputed 
and accepted by Mr. Hoyt and other anti-Mecklenburg writ- 
ers, that the county did declare independence May 20, 1775, 
in the full and literal sense of the term. It will be shown 
how the controversy originally arose and how naturally and 
innocently the simple, honest records, made by John McKnitt 
Alexander from a sense of duty and modestly filed away for 
posterity, without thought of self or of personal advantage, 
were brought to light, were impeached as fabrications or for- 
geries by writers who yet dare not question the good faith of 
the old secretary ; hoAV again and again his testimony has been 
substantiated in the after-discovered evidences, extending 
over one hundred years, only to be met with the assumption 
that the Mecklenburgers and other contemporary witnesses 
believed they did something that they did not do. 

A study will be made of the internal evidences of the May 
31st Resolves to show that this paper could not have been 
framed and adopted by the popular convention which met in 
Mecklenburg in May 1775, and the May 20 Declaration will 
be shown by its internal evidences to be -the paper that fits 
in every particular the character and temper of that meeting. 

The implication of fabrication and forgery made by Jef- 
ferson and his friends in 1819, when the Mecklenburg Decla- 
ration was published, and later, in 1830, after Jefferson's 
works were published, will be shown to have been reckless and 
unthinking, in view of the fact that critics have agreed that 
every idea in Jefferson's Declaration had become hackneyed 



14 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

by use and common expression among the people, and in view 
of the further fact that Jefferson himself said in reply to the 
charge that his paper lacked originality, "I did not consider 
it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas and to offer 
no sentiment which had never been expressed before." 

It will be shown actually that Jefferson never penned in 
his draft of the national Declaration the phrases he most 
resented in the Mecklenburg Declaration as being his per- 
sonal property ; that the body of these phrases had appeared 
three separate times in the Journal of the Continental Con- 
gress before Jefferson was selected to write the Declaration; 
that they were embodied in the original resolution of inde- 
pendence introduced by Richard Henry Lee, June 7, 1776, 
nearly a month before Jefferson wrote the Declaration. 

It will be shown that the absence of an original signed draft 
of the Mecklenburg Declaration is not peculiar or unprece- 
dented, it being duplicated in these particulars by the na- 
tional Declaration of which the original draft is not in exist- 
ence; which was not signed, as orignally written and pro- 
claimed, by the members of Congress on the 4th of July, 
1776, or by any of them, at that time, except John Hancock, 
tlie President of the Congress. 

The alleged inconsistencies appearing in the conduct of 
some of the Mecklenburgers subsequent to their Declaration 
tion will be shown to have been quite natural, in the light of 
tlie history of the times and of their environments. 

The precis left by John McKnitt Alexander in the rough 
notes and statements he made after the burning of the records 
in 1800 will be analytically examined to show the unstudied 
honesty displayed in the very mistakes as to the errors of de- 
tail which he commits without affecting the essential facts. 
The honesty of his statements will be demonstrated by the 
subsequently developed corroborating evidences concerning 
which he could have had no knowledge and with which he 
could have had no collusion. 



DECLARATION OF INTDEPENDENCE. 15 

The testimony of the eyewitnesses will be comparea to snow 
they agree on essential facts, and finally the matter will be 
summed up showing by positive contemporaneous record writ- 
ings and oral testimony, corroborated by subsequent develop- 
ments, the Declaration was made as claimed. And no fact 
will be cited for the purpose in view but those admitted by 
the enemies of the Declaration to be incontestably established 
as genuine. 



16 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

CHAPTER II. 



WHO FIRST SET THE BALL ROLLING? 



Great historical events are never appreciated or estimated 
so highly at the moment as at subsequent periods when the 
deed is seen through the perspective of years, clothed in the 
softening and exaggerating haze of mighty and, in the main, 
unexpected results flowing from them. Apparently it was 
not until 1818-19 that the greatness of the Revolutionary 
event loomed up so largely as to inspire among the members 
of Congress in Washington jealous contention as to which 
locality led off in the movement for independence, and the 
contest in its origin was apparently confined to Massachusetts 
and Virginia. But some one, probably Congressman David- 
son, from the Mecklenburg district, made the claim for Meck- 
lenburg that this county declared her independence in May, 
1775, nearly thirteen months before the Congress declared 
independence for the colonies. The statement was received 
with surprise, and by none, possibly, with more surprise than 
by Nathaniel Macon, who then represented North Carolina in 
the upper house. Macon was a student at Princeton, 18 
years old, at the beginning of the Revolution and left the uni- 
versity in 1777 to serve as a volunteer. It is not probable, 
therefore, that he was intimately familiar with the local po- 
litical events which occurred on the frontier of his native col- 
ony during these years. 

When the gossip arose in Washington Senator Macon set 
on foot an inquiry into the facts of the Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion and through Gen. Joseph Graham and Congressman 
Davidson received from Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, the 
son of John McKnitt Alexander, a full account of "the 



DEOLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 17 

event," which. Dr. Alexander said he had "copied from papers 
left by his father." This statement, which included the May 
20th Declaration, Senator Macon sent to the Ealeigh, N. C. 
Register- for publication and it appeared in The Register Fri- 
day, April 30, 1819. 

''Joe McKnitt" related at length how the Mecklenburgers 
in the spring of 1775 had called a convention to be composed 
of two delegates from each company to meet May 19 to de- 
vise means for the assistance of the "suffering" people of 
Boston and "to extricate themselves from the impending 
storm ;" that "official news, by express, arrived of the Battle 
of Lexing-ton that day of the preceding month" while the 
meeting was being held, and that under the influence of the 
news the meeting proceeded unanimously to make the follow- 
ing declaration : 

1. Resolved, That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in auy 
way, form or manner countenanced the unchartered and dangerous in- 
vasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this 
country, — to America — and to the inherent and inalienable rights of man. 

2. Resolved, That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do hereby 
dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother 
Country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British 
Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract or association with 
that Nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties — 
and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexing- 
ton. 

3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent 
People, are and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing 
Association, under the control of no power other than that of our God 
and the General Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of 
which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co- 
operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor. 

4. Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control 
of no law or legal ofRcer, civil or military, within this County, We do 
hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every of our 
former laws, — wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never 
can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities or authority 
therein. 



18 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

5. Eesolved, That it is also further decreed, that all, each and every 
military officer in this county is hereby reinstated to his former com- 
mand and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations. And 
that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil 
officer, viz: a Justice of the Peace, in the character of a "Committee 
man," to issue process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, 
according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace, and union, and 
harmony in said County, — and to use every exertion to spread the love 
of the country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a 
more general and organized government be established in this province. 

''A number of bye-laws were also added * * * to regulate 
their general conduct as citizens," and "after sitting in the 
Court house all night" they were passed unanimously May 
20, and "in a few days a deputation of the delegation con- 
vened when Capt. Jack, of Charlotte, was deputed as express 
to the Congress * * * with a copy of said Resolves and Pro- 
ceedings," etc. 

Macon followed the matter up and obtained the testimony 
of Capt. Jack that he had carried the Declaration to the Con- 
tinental Congress, and the testimony of other well known citi- 
zens that they had witnessed the event, and so overwhelming 
and conclusive was the evidence produced that incredulity was 
silenced if not convinced. 

"The name of the Cato of North Carolina, the honest, 
hoary-headed, stern, determined republican, Macon strikes 
me with great force," said John Adams when later he saw the 
statement of the editor of The Raleigh Register as to "the 
causes that led to the exhuming and publication of the resolu- 
tions" and the personality of the man who was behind the 
publication. 

And, in fact, Nathaniel Macon was the last man either to 
practice deception or to be made the victim of it. His en- 
tire career proves him to have been a singularly practical and 
honest man. Thomas H. Benton said of him: "He spoke 
more sense while getting in his chair and getting out of it 
than many delivered in long and elaborate speeches." De- 



DECLAEATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 19 

scribing Macon's death bed, Benton said it was that "of Soc- 
rates, all but the hemlock." And the brilliant John Kan- 
dolph, of Roanoke, said of Macon in his will: "He is the 
wisest, purest, and the best man that I ever knew." This is 
an almost perfect antithesis of Pope's characterization of 
Bacon, "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." 

The statement of Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander was copied 
from The Raleigh Register by the Essex Register, published 
in Salem, Mass., and came under the notice of John Adams. 
Mr. Adams sent a copy of the paper to Thomas Jefferson 
with a letter commenting on it, and here occurred the corre- 
spondence between Adams and Jelferson, which doubtless 
has been responsible for keeping the controversy alive until 
this day. 

Mr. Adams was distinctly pleased at the Mecklenburg find. 
He had been the "Colossus" of debate in the advocacy of inde- 
pendence in 1776, but Jefferson, by reason of being the drafts- 
man of the Declaration, had become identified with the event 
as none other had. A long period of bitter political rivalry 
had intervened between the two men. Both had filled the of- 
fice of President and in their old age and retirement they had 
recemented their early friendship. 

But both were very human as the history of this corres- 
pondence illustrates and Mr. Adams was inclined to be exag- 
geratedly enthusiastic about the Mecklenburg Declaration, 
fine paper that it was. "Let the galled jade wince, our with- 
ers are un wrung." He wrote to Jeiferson: 

"What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted. Crapulous Mass is 
Tom Pain's Common Sense, in comparison with this paper? Had I 
known it I would have commented upon it from the day you entered 
Congress till the Fourth of July, 1776. The genuine sense of America 
at that moment was never so well expressed before nor since." 

Before he received a reply from Jefferson to this letter he 
wrote to another correspondent : 



20 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

"I was struck with so much astonishment on reading this document 
that I could not help inclosing it immediately to Mr. Jefferson, who 
must have seen it, in the time of it, for he has copied the spirit, the 
sense and the expressions of it verbatim into his Declaration of the 4th 
of July, 1776. * * * That paper must be more universally made 
known to the present and future generation." 

Mr. Jefferson was even more disturbed than Mr. Adams 
was tickled over the production of the Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion, and under date of "Monticello, July 9, 1819, he wrote 
Mr. Adams the following heated and spicy but eminently in- 
accurate and unjust letter: 

******* 

"But what has attracted my peculiar notice, is the paper from Meck- 
lenburg County, of North Carolina, published in the Essex Register, 
which you were so kind as to enclose in your last, of June \he 22nd. 
And you seem to think it genuine. I believe it spurious. I deem it to be 
a very unjustifiable quiz, like that of the volcano, so minutely related 
to us as having broken out in North Carolina, some haL' dozen years 
ago, in that part of the country, and perhaps in that very county of 
Mecklenburg, for I do not remember its precise locality. If this paper 
be really taken from The Raleigh Register, as quoted, I wonder it should 
have escaped Richie, who culls what is good from every paper, as the 
been from every flower; and The National Intelligencer, too, which is 
edited by a North Carolinian; and that the fire should blaze out all at 
once in Essex, one thousand miles from where the spark is said to have 
fallen. But if really taken from The Raleigh Register, who is the narra- 
tor, and is the name subscribed real, or is it as fictitious as the paper 
itself? It appeals, too, to an original book, which is burnt, to Mr. 
Alexander, who is dead, to a joint letter from Caswell, Hewes, and 
Hooper all dead, to a copy sent to the dead Caswell, and another sent 
to Doctor Williamson, now probably dead, whose memory did not recol- 
lect, in the history he has written of North Carolina, this gigantic step 
of its county of Mecklenburg. Henry, too, is silent in his history of 
Marion, whose scene of action was the coimtry bordering on Mecklen- 
burg. Ramsay, Marshall, Jones, Girardin, Wirt, historians of the adja- 
cent States, all silent. When Mr. Henry's resolutions, far short of 
independence, flew like lightning through every paper, and kindled 
both sides of the Atlantic this flaming declaration of the same date, of 
the independent North Carolina, absolving it from the British allegiance, 
and abjuring all political connection with that nation, although sent to 
Congress, too, is never heard of. It is not known even a twelve-months 
after, when a similar proposition is first made in that body. Armed 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE^ 21 

with this bold example, would not you have addressed our timid brethren 
in peals of thunder, on their tardy fears? Would not every advocate 
of independence have rung the glories of Mecklenburg County, in North 
Carolina, in the ears of the doubting Dickinson and others, who hung 
so heavily on us? Yet the example of independent Mecklenburg County, 
in North Carolina, was never once quoted. The paper speaks, too, of 
the continued exertions of their delegation (Caswell, Hooper, Hewes) 
"in the cause of liberty and independence." Now, you remember as 
well as I do, that we had not a greater Tory in Congress than Hooper; 
that Hewes was very wavering, sometimes firm, sometimes feeble, ac- 
cording as the day was clear or cloudy; that Caswell, indeed, was a 
good Whig, and kept these gentlemen to the notch, while he was present ; 
but that he left us soon, and their line of conduct became then uncer- 
tain until Penn came, who fixed Hewes and the vote of the State. I 
must not be understood as suggesting any doubtfulness in the State of 
North Carolina. No State was more fixed or forward. Nor do I affirm 
positively that this paper is a fabrication, because the proof of a negative 
can only be presumptive. But I shall believe it such until positive and 
solemn proof of its authenticity shall be produced. And if the name 
of McKnitt be real, and not a part of the fabrication, it needs a vindica- 
tion by the production of such proof. For the present, I must be an 
unbeliever in the apocryphal gospel." 

Th. Jefferson. 

"Jefferson showed unworthy pique in defending the origi- 
nality of his immortal document as far as the 'apocryphal' 
paper of Mecklenburg was concerned," says Mr. Hoyt, "but 
his letter contained facts and arguments which have never 
been shaken by testimony since discovered." 

Let us see what are the "facts and arguments" in Mr. Jef- 
ferson's letter that Mr. Hoyt says are "unshaken." 

Was it true that the volcano hoax was located in Mecklen- 
burg ? 

It was reported as having broken out at Warm Springs in 
Buncombe County, N. C, equally distant from Mecklenburg 
and from Monticello. 

Was it true, as Mr. Jefferson suggested, that the paper was 
not printed in The Baleigh Register, and that "Joe McKnitt" 
Alexander, who signed it, was a fictitious person ? 

It did appeal "to an original book which" was "burnt;" 



22 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

"to Mr. Alexander," who had made the record ; "to a joint let- 
ter from Caswell, Hewes and Hooper all dead," but whose let- 
ter is not in dispute. 

It did not appeal "to a copy sent to the dead Caswell," but 
to a copy sent to the then living Davie, which was found 
among Gen. Davie's papers after his death. 

It appealed to another copy sent to Doctor Hugh William- 
son who was writing a history which was never perfected cov- 
ering the year in question. 

"Although sent to Congress it was never heard of." By 
whose fault, since Congress would not entertain it ? 

"Armed with the bold example, would not you have ad- 
dressed our timid brethren in peals of thunder on their tardy 
fears ?" 

This from a man who on the 26th day of June, 1775, three 
days after Capt. Jack appeared in Philadelphia, was appoint- 
ed to draft * a declaration of causes for the Americans taking 
up arms to be read at the head of the army by General Wash- 
ington and who wrote in that draft: 

"But that this our declaration may not disquiet the minds of our 
fellow subjects in any parts of the empire, we do further assure them 
that we mean not in any wise to affect that union with them in which 
we have so long and so happily lived and which we wish so much to 
see again restored. That necessity must be hard indeed which may 
force upon us this desperate measure, or induce us to avail ourselves 
of any aid their enemies might proffer." 

And Jefferson's letter was written to a man who, with him- 
self, on July 8, 1775, signed "our humble petition" to "your 

* Jeflferson. with Dickinson, was on June 26, 1775, added to ttie committee appointed 
to draft a declaration on taking- arms, to be read to ttie troops by ttie commander-in- 
chief. John Rutledge had made a draft, which was rejected on June 24, and no copy 
of it was presented. "Jefferson was desired to prepare a draft, but the result was not 
satisfactory either to Dickinson or to William Livingston. The former criticised It 
for its harshness, and the latter for its much fault-finding and declamation, with 
little sense or dignity."— Autobiography, in Writings (Ford), I, 16. Jefferson's draft 
was laid aside, and the task was committed to Dickinson of drawing a satisfactory 
one. He prepared a new statement in which, however, he retained the passage 
quoted from Jefl'erson's draft. Jefferson's draft is printed in Journals of the Conti- 
nental Congress (Ford), II, 12S. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 23 

majesty/' representing that "your majesty's ministers ^ - * 
have engaged us in a controversy so peculiarly abhorrent to 
the affections of your still faithful colonists, that when we 
consider whom we must oppose in this contest * * * our 
own particular misfortunes are accounted by us only as parts 
of our distress," and "solemnly" assuring "your majesty that 
we do most ardently desire the former harmony between her 
and these colonies may be restored * "'•" * and the apprehen- 
sion that now oppress our hearts with unspeakable grief being 
once removed, your majesty will find your faithful subjects 
on this continent ready, at all times as they have ever been, 
with their lives and their fortunes, to assert and maintain the 
rights and interests of your majesty, and of our mother 
country." 

''Would not every advocate of independence have sung the 
glories of Mecklenburg Coimty, in North Carolina, in the 
ears of the doubting Dickinson and others who hung so heavily 
upon us ?" Mr. Jefferson asks. 

There were no advocates * of independence in May, 1775. 

*— " The denial that independence was the final object, was constant and general. To 
obtain concessions and to preserve the connection with England was affirmed every- 
where, and John Adams, after the peace, went farther than this, for he said: "There was 
not a moment during the Revolution, when I would not have given everything I pos- 
sessed for a restoration of the state of things before the contest began, provided we could 

have had a sufficient security for its continuance Franklin's testimony a few 

days before the affair at Lexington was, that he had 'more than once traveled almost 
from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a variety of company, eating, drink- 
ing, and conversing with them freely, [and] never had heard from any person, drunk or 
sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would 
be advantageous to America. Mr. .Tay is quite as explicit. 'Diu-ing the coiu-se of my 
life,' said he, 'and until the second petition of Congress in 1775, I never did hear an 
American of any class or description, express a wish for the independence of the colo- 
nies. It has always been, and still is, my opinion and belief, that our country was 
prompted and impelled to independence by necessity and not by choice.' Mr. Jefferson 
affirmed, 'What, eastward of New York, might have been the disposition towards Eng- 
land before the commencement of hostilities, I know not; but before that I never heard 
a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain; AND AFTER THAT ITS POS- 
SIBILITY WAS CONTEMPLATED WITH AFFLICTION BY ALL.' "— L. Sabine. Bio- 
graphical Sketches of Loyalists of the Am. Rev., v. I. pp. 64-66. As Mr. Sabine justly 
observes, "the only way to dispose of testimony like this is to impeach the persons who 
have given it." 



24 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

The universal plea was for reconciliation with the mother 
country on constitutional principles. If any suggested inde- 
pendence he was promptly suppressed, as Mecklenburg's de- 
claration was suppressed. 

When the Transylvanians in Tennessee, then a part of 
North Carolina, set up a government for themselves distinct- 
ly acknowledging "their allegiance to their sovereign," whom 
"they will support at the risk of their lives," and James 
Hogg, their agent had an interview with Samuel and John 
Adams October 24, 1775, the Adamses told Hogg: 

"We have petitioned and addressed the King, and have entreated 
him to point out some mode of accommodation. There seems to be an 
impropriety in embarrassing our reconciliation with any thing new; 
and the taking under our protection of a body of people who have acted 
in defiance of the King's proclamations, will be looked on as a confirma- 
tion of that independent spirit with which we are daily reproached." 

In 1776, Washington wrote: "When I took command of 
the army, I abhorred the idea of independence." 

"Even he (Adams) and Jefferson," Mr. Hoyt admits, "still 
desired reconciliation with Great Britain in May, 1775, and 
few men then dared to openly advocate independence." 

"The paper speaks, too, of the continued exertions of their 
delegation (Caswell, Hooper, Hewes) 'in the cause of lil> 
erty.' " 

"The paper" did not speak of "Caswell, Hooper, Hewes," 
in this connection. It referred to the "delegation" in the 
Mecklenburg County convention, not to the "delegation" in 
congress. 

Hooper was not a "Tory" as Mr. Jefferson stated, and the 
only "fact and argument" in the venerable Ex-President's 
letter that remains "unshaken" is, that "No State was more 
fixed or forward" than ISTorth Carolina, a circumstance he 
found it impossible to overlook in view of the fact that the 
North Carolina Congress at Halifax, April 12, 1776, led off 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 25 

with the first recommendation from a provincial congress to 
the Continental Congress to declare independence and "em- 
powered" the "delegates for this colony" in the Continental 
Congress to "concur with the delegates of the other colonies 
in declaring independency." 

Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mr. Adams was not made public 
in 1819, when it was written, and only became known in 
1829 when the first volume of Jefferson's works were pub- 
lished. In the meantime the Mecklenburgers and their 
friends, having established the truth of the May 20 Declara- 
tion to the satisfaction apparently of every one, let the matter 
rest. After the appearance of Jefferson's letter the Xorth 
Carolina Legislature took the matter up, investigated it 
through a committee, obtained and put on record much direct 
testimony concerning it and gave its legislative seal to the 
assertion "that there is no one event of the Revolution which 
has been or can be more fully or clearly authenticated." The 
matter again became quiescent until the discovery of Gov- 
ernor Josiah Martin's contemporaneous proclamation and dis- 
patches and finally of the May 31st Resolves, which Mr. Hoyt 
and others hold to be the "true Declaration." 



26 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

CHAPTER III. 



INTEENAL EVIDENCES OF THE MAY 31ST RE- 
SOLVES. 



In determining what the Mecklenburgers did in May, 1775, 
it is important to learn what they started out to do. Fortu- 
nately there is no dispute concerning the essential facts, and 
when these are understood the rest is readily made clear. 
The passage of the Boston Port Bill, removing the capital of 
Massachusetts from that city to Salem and closing the port of 
Boston to the commerce of the world, with some other intol- 
erable measures, had stirred up the colonies from Maine to 
Georgia, and had given birth to the patriotic meetings which 
were held by the Mecklenburgers in the winter of 1774 and 
Spring of 1775. Relief of Boston was the original incen- 
tive, and many bullocks were subscribed and 100 head would 
have been given John McKnitt Alexander tells us, in his 
invaluable historical statement, had not news been received 
of the relief of the Massachusetts metropolis before means 
had been devised of driving them to that city. In the Spring 
of 1775 several informal meetings were held and finally in 
the early part of May a call was issued for a convention of 
the people to be lield on the 19th of that month. 

The person to whom the duty of issuing this call fell, in 
the absence of a committee of correspondence or safety, which 
evidently had not yet been formed in the county, was Tom 
Polk, Colonel commandant of the militia of the county. Tom 
Polk was a man of marked individuality and the executive 
leader of the Mecklenburg people in this period. The fact 
that he was their leader goes far to explain the audacity of 
their conduct. 



DECLAEATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 27 

"The original name of the ancestors of the Polks of Meck- 
lenburg was Muirhead," says Lyman Draper, in his manu- 
script sketches of the delegates to the Mecklenburg convention, 
preserved in the Thwait Library at Madison, Wis. It was 
first changed to Pulloak, then to Pollock, and finally to Polk. 
The tradition in the Polk family, as related by Mr. Draper, Is 
that "on a certain great occasion, away back in the misty past, 
a King of Scotland was marching at the head of an immense 
procession, when a small oak shrub appeared directly in front 
of his Majesty, to which one of the King's attendants, by the 
name of Muirhead, a man of great physical strength, sprang 
forward, and with a herculean effort tore it up by the roots 
and bore it out of the way. Such an act of gallantry prompt- 
ed the King to order a halt, when he knighted Muirhead upon 
the spot, and changed his name -to Pulloak — pull-oak." The 
story doubtless is a fable, but it furnishes the key to the pre- 
dominant characteristics of the Polks, and these characteris- 
tics were fully developed in Tom Polk, of Mecklenburg, who 
never did things by halves. Several years before the begin- 
ning of the Revolution he, with the Alexanders and others, 
had held up the King's surveyor, who was making 
a resurvey of their lands, and forced him to de- 
sist. He was the most influential citizen of Mecklenburg 
and was selected to read the Declaration to the people from 
the court-house steps for their ratification of it after it was 
framed. In November and December 1775, in the "Snow 
Campaign", Col. Polk led 300 ^sTorth Carolinians against the 
Tories, who had Gen. Andrew Williamson, of South Carolina, 
besieged in the stockade at ISTinety-Six. Lie aided in defeat- 
ing the Tories and received the thanks of Col. Eichard- 
son, the South Carolina commander, and the South Carolina 
Council of Safety with the assurance that "the service of those 
good neighbors would ever be held in grateful remembrance." 
Col. Polk acted as commissary general of supplies to Gen. 



28 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Gates and later to Gen. Greene, when they were in North 
Carolina. During Cornwallis' occupancy of Charlotte the 
British commander-in-chief occupied Polk's residence as hi& 
headquarters. Gen. Polk in reporting the battle of King's 
Mountain to the North Carolina Board of War, in 1780, add- 
ed : "In a few days doubt not we shall be in Charlotte, and 
I will take possession of my house and his lordship take the 
woods." Dr. J. G. Ramsey, the historian of Tennessee, said 
of Tom Polk: "He was a high-souled cavalier, full of dash 
and courage ; rich, hospitable and charming." 

Such was the man who issued the call for the Mecklenburg 
convention to be composed of two delegates from each com- 
pany, "cloathed with ample powers" to legislate for the 
county. 

The reputed author of the Mecklenburg Declaration or of 
the chief paper adopted by the Convention is Dr. Ephraim 
Brevard. His authorship of the paper is one of the undis- 
puted facts of the controversy. 

Dr. Brevard, in 1775, was 31 years old. After attending 
grammar school as a boy he entered Princeton in 1766, and 
stayed there two years, graduating in 1768. He studied for 
the medical profession in Philadelphia for a time and later 
under the tuition of the celebrated Dr. David Eamsay and 
others. After he finished his course he practiced his profes- 
sion in Charlotte. "He entered the Southern army as a sur- 
geon," says Mr. Draper, "and was captured at the surrender 
of Charleston in May, 1780." The long confinement and 
deprivation implanted the seeds of a fatal disease in his sys- 
tem and he returned home to die in 1781, after a lingering 
illness, at the age of 37. Dr. Foote says of Dr. Brevard: 
"He thought clearly, felt deeply, wrote well, resisted bravely, 
and died a martyr to that liberty none loved better and few 
understood so well." But his chief fame rests upon his au- 
thorship of the paper drafted and published by the May, 
1775, mass meeting of the people of Mecklenburg. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 29 

That paper, say the Mecklenburgers, was the May 20 Dec- 
laration of Independence. 

Wrong, say their opponents. That paper was the May 31 
Resolves. 

Here, then, is a fact of vital importance: 

Dr. Ephraim Brevard did not write the May 31st Resolves. 
That paper was written by a lawyer. It was not only written 
by a lawyer, learned in the theory of law, but it was written 
by a lawyer skilled in the practice of the law. From first to 
last it is a legal paper, drawn in legal phraseology, and guag- 
ing with professional nicety and accuracy legal deductions 
covering the entire scope and philosophy of constitutional gov- 
ernment and descending into the minutest details of admin- 
istration of the laws by popularly constituted officials. Bar- 
ring the preamble, the first three and the last three resolves, 
the May 31st paper presents within the scope of fourteen 
short paragraphs or resolves, a perfect model of the civil codes 
and judicial systems that obtain today in the several States 
of the Union. Any lawyer familiar with the codes of civil 
procedure in force at this time in New York, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina and Georgia, not to speak of other States, 
must recognize after a glance at these resolves that they con- 
tain in epitome the judicial system of inferior courts and 
courts of appeal, the procedure in actions on contract and for 
debt, all the technical complicated machinery of attachment 
liens and execution, of attachment for fraudulent and ab- 
sconding debtors, and of replevin in cases of wrongful posses- 
sion, adjusted with legal precision and nicety and in such 
simple and unerring language as gives in brief shape the 
nucleus of the cumbersome books practicing lawyers of today 
have to handle, but without the volumes of verbiage that have 
grown upon the framework of the practice. It is idle to sug- 
gest that any one not familiar with the practice could master 
and present the details of such a system. 



30 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

The May 20 Declaration is a forcible, direct, eloquent pro- 
duct, struck off in the fervor of patriotic passion and enthusi- 
asm. With some defects of tautology common to it and the 
draft of the National Declaration of Independence as it left 
the hands of Mr. Jefferson, it is almost equal to the praise 
Mr. Adams accorded it when it first met his eyes. But the 
May 31st Eesolves is a far more remarkable paper than the 
May 20 Declaration, just as a delicate and complicated piece 
of machinery in operation is more remarkable than the glow- 
ing forge, though both are set in motion by the same impelling 
power. 

The writer has been surprised at the neglect and superficial 
treatment given the May 31 Resolves, not only by some of the 
defenders of the Mecklenburg Declaration, who have strangely 
deemed it incumbent on them to pay the paper scant respect, 
but by those who maintain that it is the genuine paper, as 
well. A reason for this can be more readily conceived with 
regard to the opponents than in respect to the friends of the 
Declaration, since the office of the May 31st Resolves as a 
corollary of the May 20 Declaration is so patent and neces- 
sary. 

Mr. Hoyt presents the May 31 Resolves as '^'The True 
'Declaration/ " discusses the circumstance of their contem- 
poraneous publication as proof of this fact, in conformity with 
his assumption that there was only one meeting and one paper 
adopted in May, 1Y75, by the Mecklenburgers, and dismisses 
it as "a virtual declaration of independence," and "easily mis- 
taken" for such, but without once inquiring ever so slightly 
into the internal evidence of the paper. 

It is said that given the joint of an antediluvian mastodon^ 
the skilled zoologist of today will construct the entire skeleton 
of the animal. Given the popular meeting of the Mecklen- 
burgers of May, 1775, the conditions of the time, with the 
May 31st Resolves, and Mr. Hoyt, by a small exertion of his 



DECLAEATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 31 

analytical powers, must have constructed the May 20 Decla- 
ration. In lieu of his services, let us take up the Kesolves 
in detail and see what they disclose. 
The date line is : 

''Charlotte-Town, Mecklenburg County, 

May 31st, 1115." 

Eleven days after the organization meeting the committee 
which did not exist before that meeting convened. 

"Tills day the Committee of this County met and passed 
the following resolves: 

The ''Committee of this County !" 

How came it the "Committee of this County?" Did it 
create and constitute itself? Who gave it its powers and 
when? Did it just meet, create itself and proceed to declare 
the county independent, "virtually," or otherwise, or was it 
elected by the people and invested with its office and powers at 
a previous meeting ? 

The "Committee" could no more create itself, with such 
powers, among the Revolutionary people of Mecklenburg, as 
we shall presently come to know them, than one could lift him- 
self by his hoot straps. 

Now what did the "Committee" do ? Did it proceed to de- 
clare the county independent ? No. The "Convention" had 
already done that on the 20th of the month, when it elected 
this "Committee" of Correspondence and Safety. The "Com- 
mittee" was now to consider the relations of the county under 
its independent status to the province and the country at 
large, and also to carry out the behest of the Declaration by 
framing a system of county government. The Declaration 
of Independence was a local county affair, but in making it 
the "Convention" recognized and avowed its allegiance to the 
"General Government of Congress." The members very well 
understood that by themselves they could not make their dec- 



32 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

laration good and that Mecklenburg was dependent upon the 
sympathy and co-operation of their own province and the other 
colonies. , The Declaration had already been denounced by 
some as a "rash" act and the "Committee" in its memorial to 
Congress on the subject, had to address itself to that body, 
with reasons which would appeal to it. Knowing, as it must 
have known, that the universal policy and sentiment of the 
country outside of Mecklenburg, in so far as it was openly 
expressed, was for reconciliation with Great Britain on consti- 
tutional principles. So at the very outset, it will be found 
that the attention of the "Committee" was directed to the 
situation of the country at large and not to the county at all. 
It did not undertake to declare independence for the Ameri- 
caii colonies, as Mr. Hoyt and others who claim the May 31st 
Resolves is the "True Declaration" must consistently argue, 
but the 'Committee" proceeded to state the actual situation in 
the colonies as the members "conceived" it to be. Therefore, 
the "Committee" said, in its preamble: 

"Whereas, by an Address presented to his Majesty by both Houses 
of Parliament, in February last, the American colonies are declared to 
be in a state of actual rebellion, we conceive, that all laics and com- 
missions confirmed by or derived from the authority of the King or 
Parliament, are annulled and vacated, and the former civil constitution 
of these colonies, for the present, loholly suspended. To provide in 
some degree for the exigencies of this coiinty, in the present alarming 
priod, we deem it proper and necessary to pass the folloioing Resolves, 
viz: 

Now what were the "exigencies" peculiar to this county 
for which the "Committee" was called on to provide ? Why, 
its state of independence as declared on the 20th of the month 
which the "Committee" in this paper quietly assumes is too 
well known for more specific allusion. 

And so from this premise the "Committee" resolve : 

"/. That all commissions, civil and military heretofore granted by 
the Crown, to be exercised in these colonies, are null and void, and the 
constitution of each particular colony wholly suspended. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 33 

"//. That the Provincial Congress of each Province, under the 
direction of the Great Continental Congress, is invested with all legisla- 
tive and executive poioers icithin their respective provinces; and that 
no other legislative or executive power, does or can exist at this time in 
any of these colonies. 

"III. As all former laws are now suspended in this province, and 
the Congress have not yet provided others, we judge it necessary, for 
better preservation of good order, to form certain rules and regulations 
for the internal government of this county, until laivs shall be provided 
for us by the Congress. 

(The address displayed in the foregoing three resolves, 
with a view to reconciling the independent status of Meck- 
lenburg with the actual situation in the country at large, is 
80 very remarkable as to suggest in themselves the impelling 
motive underlying them.) 

The thirteen resolves immediately following constitute the 
system of laws provided for in a general way in the May 20 
Declaration. These resolves follow: 

"IV. That the inhabitants of this county do meet on a certain day 
appointed by this COMMITTEE, and having formed themselves into 
ndne companies, (to-wit) eight in the county, and one in the town of 
Charlotte, do chuse a Colonel and other military officers, who shall hold 
and exercise their sevei'al powers by virtue of this choice, and inde- 
pendent of the Croivn of Great-Britain, and former Constitution of this 
province. 

"V. That for the better preservation of the peace and administration of 
justice, each of those companies do chuse from their oivn body, two 
discreet freeholders, who shall be empowered, each by himself and singly 
to decide and determine all matters of controversy, arising within said com- 
pany under the sum of twenty shillings; and jointly and together, all 
controversies under the sum of forty shillings; yet so as that their 
decisions may admit of appeal to the CONVENTION of the SELECT- 
MEN of the county; and also that any one of these men, shall have 
power to examine and commit to confinement persons accused of petit 
larceny. 

"VI. That those tico SELECT-MEN , thus chosen, do jointly and 
together chuse from the body of their particular com,pany, two persons 
properly qualified to act as Constables, icho may assist them in the 
execution of their office. 

"VII. That upon the complaint of any persons to either of these 
SELECT-MEN , he do issue his warrant, directed to the Constable, 

3 



34 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

commanding him to bring the aggressor before him or them, to answer 
said complaint. 

''VIII. That these EIGHTEEN, SELECT-MEN, thus appointed, do 
meet every third Thursday * in January, April, July, and October at 
the Court-House, in Charlotte, to hear and determine all matters of 
controversy, for sums exceeding forty shillings, also appeals; and in 
cases of felony, to commit the person or persons convicted thereof to 
close confinement, until the Provincial Congress shall provide and estab- 
lish laws and modes of proceedings in all such cases. 

"IX. That these EIGHTEEN, SELECT-MEN, thus convened, do chuse 
a Clerk, to record the transactions of said CONVENTION, and that 
said Clerk, upon the application of any person or persons aggrieved, 
do issue his warrant to one of the Constables of the company to which 
the offender belongs, directing said Constable to summons and warn 
said offender to appear before the CONVENTION, at their next sitting, 
to answer the aforesaid complaint. 

"X. That any person making complaint upon oath, to the Clerk, or 
any member of the CONVENTION, that he has reason to suspect, that 
any person or persons indebted to him, in a sum above forty shillings, 
intended clandestinely to withdi'aw from the county, ivithout paying 
such debt, the Clerk or such member shall issue his warrant to the Con- 
stable, commanding him to take said person or persons into safe custody, 
until the next sitting of the CONVENTION. 

"XI. That when a debtor for a sum below forty shillings shall abscond 
and leave the county, the warrant granted as aforesaid, shall extend to 
any goods or chattels of said debtor, as may be found, and such goods 
or chattels be seized and held in custody by the Constable, for the space 
of thirty days ; in which time, if the debtor fail to return and discharge 
the debt, the Constable shall return the warrant to one of the SELECT- 
MEN of the company, irhere the goods are found, who, shall issue orders 
to the Constable to sell such part of said goods, as shall amount to the 
sum dues. That ivhen the debt exceeds forty shillings, the return shall 
be made to the CONVENTION, ivho shall issue orders for sale. 

"XII. That all receivers and collectors of quit rents, public and county 
taxes, do pay the same into the hands of the CHAIRMAN OF THIS 
COMMITTEE, to be by them disbursed as the public exigencies may re- 
quire; and that such receivers and collectors proceed no further in their 
office, until they be approved of by, and have given this COMMITTEE, 
good and sufficient security, for a faithful return of such monies when 
collected. 

"XIII. That the COMMITTEE be accountable to the county for the 
application of all monies received from such public officers. 

"XIV. That all these officers hold their commissions during the pleas- 
ure of their several constituents. 

* This should be Tuesday. Probably a typographical error. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 35 

"XV. That this COMMITTEE icill sustain all damages that ever 
hereafter may accrue to all or any of these officers thus appointed, and 
thus acting, on account of their obedience to these Resolves. 

"XVI. That whatever person shall hereafter receive a commission from 
the Crown, or attempt to exercise any such commission heretofore re- 
ceived, shall be deemed an enemy to his country, and upon information 
being made to the Captain of the company in which he resides, the said 
Company shall cause him to be apprehended, and conveyed before the 
two SELECT-MEN of the said company, who, upon proof of the fact, 
shall commit him, the said offender, to safe custody until the next sifting 
of the COMMITTEE, who shall deal with him as prudence may direct. 

"XVII. That any person refusing to yield obedience to the above 
Resolves, shall be considered equally criminal, and liable to the sanie 
punishment, as the offenders above last mentioned." 

There are a number of points about this paper which are 
self-evident. 

It is a complete and masterly digest of a system of laws, 
expressed in law language, for the popular administration 
of justice, in conformity with this science as it was developed 
at that day, and as it is known at this day, with little or no 
improvement. 

It contains the whole scheme of Meeklenburg''s ind( pen- 
dent county government. 

In drafting this paper, the '^Committee" did not stari out 
to declare the county independent, "in effect," or otherwise, 
but incidentally, in constituting the officers created, it re- 
ferred to the county's independent status as an accomplished 
fact. 

Throughout the code of laws laid down, the keynote of 
the "bill of rights," that all power is derived from the people, 
and jiublic officials are servants of and responsible to the 
people, is predominant. 

The paper is one that was never formulated and put forth 
by a popular meeting of the people, but was digested and 
perfected in the closet, with much time and labor. 

In it all the checks and counter-checks, the respective func- 
tions and responsibilities of the various departments of gov- 



36 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

eminent, under the republican form, are nicely balanced and 
adjusted, with technical accuracy. 

The inhabitants are directed to meet, form themselves into 
nine companies, choose their military officers, who shall be 
"independent of the Crown of Great Britain," since the peo- 
ple have declared themselves independent. 

Each company is to choose "two discreet freeholders," 
singly to decide matters of controversy under forty shillings, 
and jointly as to controversies over forty shillings, "yet so as 
may admit of appeal to the CONVENTIOIT of Select-Men" 
composed of the whole body of "discreet freeholders" or 
"Select-Men" chosen by the companies. 

The Select-Men are to choose their Constables. 

The Select-Men have power to issue warrants upon com- 
plaint. 

The eighteen Select-Men are directed to hold quarterly 
sessions to determine matters over forty shillings, appeals, 
and to commit to j)rison offenders in cases of felony. 

The eighteen Select-Men are to choose a clerk "to record 
the transactions of said CONVENTION" and the power is 
given the clerk to issue his warrant summoning offenders "to 
appear before the CONVENTION." 

Jurisdiction is given the "CONVENTION" in cases of 
absconding debtors, and all the technical details of seizure 
and holding goods and chattels and the disposition of them 
are accurately stated. 

"That all receivers and collectors of quit-rents, public and 
county taxes, do pay the same into the hands of the Chair- 
man of this COMMITTEE to be by them disbursed as the 
public exigencies require," etc. 

"That the COMMITTEE be accountable to the county for 
the application of these monies." 

"That all these officers hold their offices during the pleasure 
of their constituents." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 37 

''That this COMMITTEE will sustain all damages," etc. 

"That whatever person shall hereafter receive" or "attempt 
to exercise" a "commission from the Crown" * * "shall 
be deemed an enemy," shall be apprehended by the company 
in which he resides "* * conveyed before the two SE- 
LECT-MEN of the company" and kept in safe custody "un- 
til the next sitting of the COMMITTEE, who shall deal with 
him as prudence may direct." 

Mr. Hoyt, in synopsizing these "Resolves" says loosely 
"that a body of Select-Men having administrative and ju- 
dicial powers called a convention or committee shall be elected 
by the people." 

This alone demonstrates how superficially Mr. Hoj't has 
read this remarkable paper, for we have seen how careful 
the "Committee" is to differentiate the two respective bodies 
and to assign to each its respective powers, duties and respon- 
sibilities. The "COlvTVEISTTION" is the whole body of the 
original delegates from the companies, called Select-Men, 
The delegates from each company, single and jointly, are 
given the powers of inferior magistrates. The entire eigh- 
teen sitting en banc at the quarterly sessions are vested with 
the jurisdiction of a Superior Court to hear and determine 
matters of controversy over forty shillings, and to entertain 
appeals and to try and punish persons charged with felony. 

The "Committee" is not referred to after the executive 
act of appointing the day for the people to meet until the 
administrative and executive department of government, dis- 
tinct from the judicial arm, is taken up. The "Convention" 
is not mentioned again after this point, but the "Chairman 
of the Committee" is to receive the public taxes, and these 
are to be disbursed by the "Committee," which body is? to 
be responsible to the people. Also, in political offenses, the 
offender who attempts to "exercise a commission from the 
Crown" or treat the "Resolves" with contumacy and disobe- 



38 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

dience is brought before — not the "Convention," to be dealt 
with under the civil laws which constitute that body's juris- 
diction — but before the "Committee" to be dealt with "as 
prudence may direct," 

In other words the "Committee," in addition to its execu- 
tive character as the head of the civil government, was an 
extra-judicial revolutionary tribunal that dealt with political 
offenders at this juncture as the public safety might dictate. 

It is thus demonstrated that the "Committee" which or- 
dered the May 31st Resolves signed, was a separate and dis- 
tinct body from the "Convention" formed of the delegates 
of the people ; that there was such a "Convention ;" that the 
"Convention" must have created the "Committee," doubtless 
from a smaller number of its body as Alexander says ; that it 
must by some act have authorized the "Committee" to pro- 
ceed to make "rules and regulations" for the independent 
government of the county, and this act could have been no 
less than the Declaration of Independence, into which Mr. 
Hoyt says, the Mecklenburgers "transfigured" the May 31st 
Resolves. 

And now the question arises who was the author of the 
May 31st Resolves. ISTot Dr. Ephraim Brevard, who is the 
author, by common consent, of the May 20 Declaration. The 
May 31st Resolves were written by a practicing lawyer. Dr. 
Brevard was a physician and surgeon, and never practiced 
or even read law. Bancroft curiously enough, under these 
circumstances, adopts the view that Brevard wrote the "Re- 
solves." He says that Brevard's name "should be remem- 
bered with honor by his countrymen," for having "digested 
the system which was then adopted and formed, in effect a 
declaration of independence, as well as a complete system of 
government." 

If Dr. Brevard did not draft the May 31st Resolves, the 
question arises, who did draft them. The writer believes 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 39 

there is no logical escape from the conclusion that this paper 
was drafted by Waightstill Averj. 

In 1766, at the age of 23 years, Avery graduated at Prince- 
ton College, and remained there as a tutor for a year. He 
then removed to Maryland, where he studied law for about a 
year and a half. Early in 1769 he set out for North Caro- 
lina and selected Mecklenburg as his home. In 1775 he was 
32 years old and had been practicing law in Mecklenburg 
for about six years. He appears at this period to have been 
the only resident lawyer in Mecklenburg. Avery was much 
of a politician and very active in the public affairs of the 
county. "He was a shrewd lawyer," says Prof. F. M. Hub- 
bard, "whose integrity, no less than his deliberate wisdom, 
made his counsels weighty. " He represented Mecklenburg 
in the provincial House of Commons in 1777 and "served on 
the committee to revise the whole body of the public laws of 
the State," says Draper. "On the 12th of January, 1778, 
he was commissioned Attorney General of the State." 

Certainly here was the one man* in Mecklenburg in 1775 
qualified to draft the May 31st Resolves, as his professional 
character and subsequent appointments testify. There was 
another lawyer present in the May 19-20 Convention, Col. 
William Kennon, but he was a Virginian, in Charlotte on 
professional business, probably, and he scarcely tarried long 
enough or entered so deeply into the county's affairs as to 
digest a code of laws for her people. Kennon was one of 
the speakers in the convention and Gen. Joseph Graham, who 
was present as a boy, in his testimony given fifty-five years 

♦The Mecklenburg Censor makes Waightstill Avery say : 
" My learning too, you know is great, 
In all the tricks and wiles of state. 
Able I am from any block, 
To hew a police or crock; 
And any law can quickly make, 
To hang a man or whip a snake; 
To fix your right in land or pin 
Or castigate you when you sin." 



40 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

after, says that he was one of the sub-committee of three 
which, with Dr. Brevard as chairman, retired to draft the 
May 20 Declaration, a service which as a visitor he could 
very readily have performed. 

There is a feature of the May 31st Resolves which is sig- 
nificant of a motive in its draftsman. This is the skilful 
qualification of the state of independence in such a way as 
to continue the judicial system of the county as a part of 
the courts of the province and subject to the authority of 
the General Congress. Lawyer Avery was dependent upon 
his practice in these courts and it is conceivable that he might 
elect to so frame Mecklenburg's independent system of gov- 
ernment as not to throw her out of joint with the general 
judicial system at the sacrifice of his professional business. 

To this motive may have been due the diplomatic tenor of 
the preamble and the wording of the eighteenth resolve: 

"XVIII. That these Resolves be in full force and virtue, until in- 
structions from the Provincial Congress, regulating the jurisprvdence 
of the province, shall provide otherioise, or the legislative body of Great 
Britain, resign its unjust and arbitrary pretentions tvith respect to 
America." 

There remains two more of the May 31st Eesolves which 
follow : 

"XIX. That the eight militia companies in the county, provide them- 
selves with proper arms and accoutrements, and hold themselves in 
readiness to execute the commands and directions of the General Con- 
gress of this Province and this COMMITTEE. 

"XX. That the COMMITTEE appoint Col. Thomas Polk, and Doctor 
Joseph Kennedy, to purchase 300 lb. of powder, 600 lb. of lead, 1,000 
flints, for the use of this county and deposit the same in such place as 
the COMMITTEE hereafter may direct. 

"Signed by order of the COMMITTEE. 

EPH. BREVARD, Clerk of the Committee." 

It will be seen that in these later Eesolves as in the earlier 
ones the "Committee" consistently assigns to itself every act 
of an executive character as distinct from the "Convention" 
which is confined to its functions as a judicial and represen- 
tative body. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 41 



CHAPTER IV. 



QUESTION OF PLAGIAEISM. 



Richard Henry Lee was the author of the National Decla- 
ration of Independence; independence was resolved on July 
2, 1776; the Declaration was not signed by the members of 
Congress, or any of them, on the 4th of July, as stated by 
Mr. Jefferson in his account of it, but it was generally signed 
by the members, though not by all of them, on August 2. 

The first colony to officially authorize its delegates to concur 
in a declaration of independence was North Carolina. The 
fourth "to pronounce for independence was Virginia," says 
Elson, "which went farther than the others by instructing 
its delegates to propose independence to the Continental Con- 
gress. This bold resolution was sent by special messenger 
to Philadelphia." 

Under the instructions of the Virginia Assembly, on the 

7th of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee moved the following 

resolution in Congress contained in the Virginia instructions : 

"Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right ought to he, 
free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance 
to the British Crown, and that all political connection tetween them 
and the State of Great Britain is, and ougiuto be, totally dissolved." 

"This resolution, in the writing of Richard Henry Lee, is 
in the papers of the Continental Congress, No. 23, folio 11." 
(Ford, ed.) 

It is in this resolution chiefly that are found the phrases 
similar to some in the Mecklenburg Declaration, which latter 
Mr. Jefferson took exception to as forgeries or plagiarisms 
from his paper. The second and third resolves of the Meck- 
lenburg Declaration read : 



42 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

"2. Resolved, That we the citizens of Mecklenburg County do hereby 
dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother 
Country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British 
Groion, and abjure all political connection, contract or association with 
that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties — 
and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexing- 
ton. 

"3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independ- 
ent People, are and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing 
Association, under the control of no power other than that of our 
God and the General Government of the Congress; to the maintenance 
of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co- 
operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor." 

The words which appear in both Eichard Henry Lee's 
resolution and the Mecklenburg Declaration are printed in 
italic. The phrase "We * pledge to each other our * * * 
lives, our fortunes and our * sacred honour" is similar to 
the closing words of Jefferson's paper, written by Jefferson 
himself. 

Richard Henry Lee's resolution was debated from day to 
day, but action on it was postponed for three weeks. "In 
the meanwhile, that no time be lost, in case the Congress agree 
thereto" a committee was selected "to consider draft of a 
declaration of independence, or the form of announcing it to 
the world." Tuesday, June 11, the committee was appointed 
and, in the absence of Richard Henry Lee, who by parlia- 
mentary usage would have been its chairman, but who had 
been called home by the illness of his wife, Mr. Jefferson 
was selected chairman of the committee and became drafts- 
man of the declaration, or of the paper setting forth the 
causes for the action. Mr. Jefferson's draft was brought in 
and read June 28 and ordered to lie on the table. The con- 
cluding clause of the paper as written by Mr. Jefferson 
follows : 

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, 
in General Congress assembled, do in the Name, and by the authority of 
the good People of these States, reject and renounce all Allegiance and 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 43 

Subiection to the Kings of Great Britain, and all others, who n^ay here- 
fftfclaim by. through or under them; we utterly dissolve and break 
off all polTtica Connection which may have heretofore subsisted between 
u! and tte People or Parliament of Great Britain, and, finally we do 
TsseTtanr declare these Colonies to be free and independent States and 
that as free and independent States they shall hereafter have Power to 
Levy War Conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce^and 
TL all c;ther Acts and Things which independent States -y o Krght 
do And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to 
each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honour. 

-There was no copy of the Declaration made for printer's 
copy The corrected copy in tlie hands of Secretary Thonap- 
son at the close of the session July 4 went to the official 
printer, John Dnnlap, and was nsed by him as copy, says 
Michael, in his ''Story of the Declaration of Independence 
Illustrated " In the fac simile of this original draft used 
for printer's copy, in the margin, opposite the operative 
words as written by Jefferson, is written the words a differ- 
ent phraseology inserted," and in the first broadside of the 
Declaration as printed and as it is now known, the Lee reso- 
lution was bodily inserted, making the concluding clause 
read as follows : 

.'We therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America 
in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the 
WoTld for the fectitude of our intentions, do. in the Name and by the 
Authority of the Good People of these Colonies solemnly Publish and 
Dedare ka* these United Colonies are, and of RigM, ougM to U free 
^^aependent States; tkat they are Absolved fromaU ^^^^^-^ *« 
the British Crown, and that all political eonnexron letween them and^ 
the ItTeof Greal Britain, is and ought to be totally d^ssolved ; ^nd 
h t Is ret and independent States, they have full Power to levy War 
concude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all 
oth r Acts and Things which Independent States may of nght do And 
for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection 
of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our 
Fortunes and our Sacred Honour." 

Thus it will be seen that in the end Richard Henry Lee's 
resolution was used as the operative words of the Declaration 
of Independence and that it contained the phrases that Mr. 



44 DEFENCE OF THE MECKIiBNBUBG 

Jefferson believed the Mecklenburg paper plagiarized from 
him. After the lapse of forty-odd years not only Mr. Jeffer- 
son accepted Kichard Henry Lee's resolution as his own, but 
John Adams, who had debated this resolution almost daily 
for three weeks before Mr. Jefferson's draft of the Declara- 
tion was read, when he saw similar words in the Mecklenburg 
paper, jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Jefferson had 
"copied the spirit, the sense, and the expressions of it verba- 
tim into his Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776." Of 
course, Mr. Jefferson did not copy from the Mecklenburg 
Declaration, nor did he even copy from Richard Henry Lee's 
resolution, with which he was familiar at the time of writing 
the Declaration. The substitution of the words of the reso- 
lution, which were in every way more forcible and better 
rounded than Jefferson's language at this point, was doubtless 
the work of John Adams himself, or of Dr. Franklin, as the 
handwriting of both of these members is in evidence through- 
out the rough draft of the Declaration, pruning down and 
materially improving the paper as it left Mr. Jefferson's 
hands. 

Congress entered on the direct consideration of the ques- 
tion of independence July 1 with Richard Henry Lee's reso- 
lution before it. John Adams, writing to Samuel Chase 
July 1, 1776, said the "debate took up most of the day, but 
it was an idle mispense of time, for nothing was said but 
what had been repeated and hackneyed in that room before 
a hundred times for six months past. In the Committee of 
the Whole, the question was carried in the affirmative, and 
reported to the House. A colony desired it to be postponed 
until tomorrow, when it will pass by a great majority, per- 
haps with almost unanimity. Yet I cannot promise this, 
because one or two gentlemen may possibly be found who 
will vote point blank against the known and declared sense 
of their constituents." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 45 

The vote on Lee's resolution was taken July 2 and it was 
carried by a big majority but not unanimously. 

Elson says on the afternoon of the 2d the resolution was 
passed by the unanimous vote of twelve colonies, New York 
not voting. This is an error, as South Carolina and Penn- 
sylvania voted against the resolution. On the 3d South 
Carolina concurred for the sake of imanimity and on the 
4th of July the Declaration was agreed to by twelve colonies 
and printed with the Lee resolution as its operative words. 

This still leaves the question open, however, as to how 
similar phrases occurred in Lee's resolutions, offered in Con- 
gress June 7, 1776, and in the Mecklenburg paper of May 
20, 1775. From the limited research the writer has made 
along this line he believes it will be easy to show that these 
phrases and others in the Mecklenburg paper and in Mr. 
Jeiferson's Declaration were common among the people at 
the time. One fact must not be glossed over, in the interest 
of truth, and it is that while the public policy of the time 
tabooed the suggestion of independence, independence was 
nevertheless the private talk and sense of many people. Pop- 
ular phrases aptly expressing the sense of these people 
would naturally be coined and repeated from mouth to mouth 
without any thought of private ownership. One of Richard 
Henry Lee's biographers says he had openly advocated inde- 
pendence for over a year before introducing the Virginia 
resolution in Congress. Where did he get the words of that 
resolution, or when did he originate them ? Did he originate 
them ? Did he ever claim that he originated them ? Jeffer- 
son obviously thought in 1819 that he originated them, but 
he did not. It was probably a popular phrase of the time. 
Brevard used it without quotation marks in his "Instruc- 
tions," 1776, for the second time. 

It is not probable that Jefferson saw the Mecklenburg 
Declaration when Captain Jack was in Philadelphia in 



46 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

June, 1775. Jefferson was a new member and had just 
taken his seat in the Continental Congress on June 21, about 
the same day Jack arrived there. Richard Henry Lee had 
been a member — and an active one — coming over from the 
first Congress. Did he see the Mecklenburg papers ? Possi- 
bly. It is more probable, however, that the phrase "That 
these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and 
independent States," etc., was a product from the popular 
expression of the people. It has throughout the roundness, 
the smoothness, the pointedness, the conciseness and the com- 
pleteness of a sentence which has been reduced by attrition 
and much usage to its perfections of sense and shape. Possi- 
bly it had been coined in Virginia. Possibly Patrick Henry 
may have said something like it in that famous speech for 
liberty in old St. John's church in Richmond March 25, 
1775, and Wirt may have overlooked it in gathering up the 
speech in after years. 

Possibly Col. William Kennon, "Gentleman," of Henrico 
County, Va., of which Richmond is the seat, had heard these 
phrases in Virginia and gave them as his contribution to the 
Mecklenburg Declaration, which he helped Ephraim Brevard 
to frame, having on his visit to Mecklenburg incidentally 
attended the convention and participated in its proceedings. 

For whatever may be the explanation of the coincidences 
of the ISTational and Mecklenburg Declarations conscious for- 
gery or plagiarism is not entertained and is not to be enter- 
tained. Certainly John McKnitt Alexander was anything 
but a forger, as will appear further on, and John McKnitt 
Alexander stands voucher for the Mecklenburg Declaration 
of Independence. Mr. Hoyt and other opponents of the 
Mecklenburg Declaration testify to the honesty of the old 
Secretary, and if they did not his notes easily demonstrate 
the fact. 



DEOIiAEATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 47 

John McKnitt Alexander left a copy of the Mecklenburg 
Declaration in his o^vn handwriting. It is a paper that he 
did not have the literary ability to forge, as is evident from 
his other manuscript. Mr. Hoyt says the "diction" of the 
paper is ''ambitious, forcible but inaccurate ;" that the re- 
solves "bear every mark of having been written by some one 
endeavoring to express the spirit of the period," and "Eph- 
raim Brevard," the author of the Mecklenburg Declaration, 
"who was a graduate of Princeton," and "an able writer, 
* * could not have written a ])aper with such numerous 
tautologies and bungling imitation of the language of legal 
instruments." Mr. Jefferson was a college graduate and a 
great lawyer beside, and any one by taking the trouble to 
compare the manuscript draft of the Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion with the manuscript draft of the i^ational Declaration 
as Mr. Jefferson wrote it will find "tautologies" and "ambi- 
tious langniage" in as great abundance to the square inch, to 
put it consei'V'atively, as in the Mecklenburg paper. 

In the opening sentence of his paper Mr. Jefferson wrote 
(see first draft Journals of Continental Congress, Vol. V., 
p. 491): 

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a peo- 
ple to advance from that Subordination, in which they have hitherto 
remained and to assume among the powers of the earth, the equal and 
independent station to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God 
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that 
they should declare the causes which impel them to the change."' 

This is an exceedingly pretty, euphonious, almost poetic, 
a trifle "ambitious" and a well-rounded exordium, but it is 
scarcely as direct, forcible, and electric with the fire of action 
as the opening paragraph of the Mecklenburg paper left with 
us by John McKnitt Alexander, with all its tautology : 

"1. That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way form 
or manner, countenanced the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our 
rights as claimed by Great Britain is an enemy to this county — to 
America — and to the inherent and inalienable rights of man. 



48 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

The Mecklenburg paper throughout compares favorably 
with Jefferson's paper — more than favorably with the manu- 
script draft of Jefferson's paper as it left his hands. It is 
terser, more virile with the fire of the moment, and devoid of 
abstractions which, in a sense, weakened Jefferson's docu- 
ment. It is evident that at the time the national paper was 
written Jefferson had not fully developed his great powers. 
Both his ideas and his words ran riot, and rein was given to 
the besetting temptation of exceptionally fertile minds like 
his to multiply both thoughts and words. The ]!»J"ational 
Declaration is a great paper. It was made for a great occa- 
sion and it would have been a great paper if it had been 
written by another. It would have been a chaster, more 
virile paper if Eichard Henry Lee had written it. It would 
have been more practical and to the point, even, had the 
"doubting Dickinson" written it. But the paper as we have 
it is not the work of one mind. Jefferson tells us he took 
notes during the "great debate," when, as John Adams de- 
clared, "nothing was said but what had been repeated and 
hackneyed in that room before for six months past," and that 
he "reduced them to form on the final occasion." Besides, 
the paper as we know it is in a sense, the combined work of 
that body of whom Chatham said, "For myself I must de- 
clare and avow that in all my reading and observation * * 
* * that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and 
wisdom of conclusion * * * * no nation or body of men 
can stand in preference to the congress at Philadelphia." 

If then the Mecklenburg Declaration, which compares 
favorably with the paper produced by this body, was forged 
who was the forger and where did he hide his great light? 
What was his motive in forging it ? It could not have been 
to hide the paper away in an old stocking, so to speak. John 
McKnitt Alexander was not the forger. Mr. Hoyt himself 
acquits Alexander of forging it. He says that the Declara- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 49 

tion is "a far more scholarly paper" than Alexander's histor- 
ical statement and notes, which were attached to the Declara- 
tion. But if John McKnitt Alexander, who is conceded to 
have been scrupulously honest throughout, if nfistaken, did 
not forge the paper, he was equally guilty with the forger, 
if it was forged, knowing that it was forged and attesting it 
as a genuine paper. 

Much stress is laid upon John McKnitt Alexander's cer- 
tificate, attached to the copy of his historical statement and 
of the Declaration which he deposited with Gen. Davie, in 
which he said, "It may he worthy of notice here to observe 
that the foregoing statement, though fundamentally correct, 
yet may not literally correspond with the original record of 
the transactions of said delegation and court of inquiry, as 
all those records and papers were burnt with the house on 
April 6th, 1800." Tliere is no question but that the his- 
torical "statement" Avas made from memory and this accounts 
for the minor errors, not affecting the fundamental facts, 
which occur in it, such for instance as confusing the dates of 
1785 and 1787, writing Joseph for William Hooper and 
Hughes for Hewes, but these are errors which a mere forger 
would never have made. The Declaration Alexander left as 
a copy of somebody else's paper and there is no direct evi- 
dence that he drew on his memory for the wording of it. 
Had he reproduced it from memory he must have reproduced 
it accurately, or depending, in some measure, on his own 
words for expressing the sense of it, have fallen into the 
faults of style and verbiage which his historical "statement" 
betrays. 

There are several copies of the Mecklenburg Declaration 
extant, notably the "Martin copy," which appeared in Fran- 
cois Xavier Martin's History of ISTorth Carolina, which was 
written between 1791 and 1809, when he was a resident of 



50 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

North Carolina, but which was not published until ]829, 
after the controversy arose about the Declaration. Judge 
Martin, the historian, told Rev. Francis L. Hawks, as Dr. 
Hawks testified, that he got his copy of the Mecklenburg 
Declaration in manuscript, from the western part of North 
Carolina * * * * before the year 1800, when the original 
records were burned. The truth of Martin's statement is 
disputed, however, and it is not the purpose of the writer to 
draw aid from any but the known and undisputed facts of 
the controversy and such as can be demonstrated from placing 
these together. 

The meeting of the May 20 Convention, its proceedings 
resolving on independence for the county and the Declaration 
adopted by the Convention are all denied, in the face of all 
the definite verbal and documentary testimony furnished by 
eye witnesses of the event, simply and* purely on the assump- 
tion that the May 31st Resolves, authorized by the Mecklen- 
burg Committee of Safety and found contemporaneously 
printed, could not have been issued in Mecklenburg eleven 
days after the Declaration of Independence. 

The writer will show from the unimpeached records and 
testimony that the Convention was held ; that the Declaration 
was made; that the May 31st Resolves framed by a Commit- 
tee created by the Convention and constituted out of a smaller 
number of its delegates was not only the direct sequence and 
result of the May 20 proceedings, but was provided for in 
the copy of the Declaration as left to us by John McKnitt 
Alexander. 

Before concluding with the subject of plagiarism there re- 
mains the phrase "pledge to each other our lives our fortunes 
and our sacred honor," which words occur in similar combi- 
nation in both the National and Mecklenburg Declarations. 
These words in this combination are not any more original 
with Mr. Jefferson than were the words of Mr. Richard 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 51 

Henry Lee's resolution. It was a hackneyed phrase of the 
time used with variations to suit the occasion. 

In their address to ^'Ilis Excellency Josiah Martin" in 
answer to his speech to the General Assembly held at New- 
bern, N. C, April 4, 1775, the General Assembly, while 
declaring through Speaker John Harvey their purpose to 
maintain their constitutional rights, say that "the inhabitants 
of North Carolina" are "ready at the Expence of their Lives 
and Fortunes to protect and support his [Majesty's] person," 
etc. This address is printed in the South Carolina Gazette 
and Country Journal Tuesday, May 23, 1775, on file in the 
Charleston, S. C, Library. 

The presentment of the grand jury of Cheraw District, 
S. C, made to the court of Over and Terminer held at Lonof 
Bluff, April 15, 1775, is printed in the South Carolina Ga- 
zette and Country Journal Tuesday, June G, 1775, (Charles- 
ton Library.) The following is extracted from tlie present- 
ment: "We present as an enormous grievance the power 
exercised by the British Parliament. ****** 
We, well knowing the importance of those Bights in securing 
to us our Liberties, our Lives and Estates and conceiving 
it to be every man's indispensable Duty to transmit them to 
his posterity are fully determined to defend them at the 
hazard of our Lives and Fortunes." 

At an indignation meeting held in Philadelphia, April 25, 
1775, on receipt of the news from Lexington the people agreed 
to "associate for the purpose of defending with arms their 
lives, their property and liberty." 

In the address of the Massachusetts Provisional Congress 
"To the Inhabitants of Great Britain" on the Lexington 
slaughter, dated April 26, 1775, signed by Joseph Warren, 
President, occurs this sentence : "We profess to be his loyal 
and dutiful subjects, and so hardly dealt with as we have 



52 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

been, are still ready, with our Lives and fortunes, to defend 
his person, family, Crown and Dignity." 

In the South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal Tues- 
day, June 20, 1775, (Charleston Library) under date "New- 
bern, K C, May 26, 1775," is this: ''The people of this 
town have formed themselves into two companies * * * * 
who are determined at every hazzard to risk their lives and 
fortunes in defense of constitutional liberty." 

The news from Lexington induced the General Committee 
in South Carolina to hasten the meeting of the Provincial 
Congress, whose members on June 2, 1775, associated them- 
selves for defense against every foe ; "ready to sacrifice their 
lives and fortunes to secure" freedom and safety. 

The subscribers to the "Cumberland Association" June 
20, 1775, united themselves "under every tie of religion and 
honor * * * * to go forth * * * and be ready to sacrifice 
our lives and fortunes" etc. 

In July, 1775, John Dickinson in drawing up the second 
petition to George III employed this familiar phrase sub- 
stantially to assure his Majesty that his "faithful subjects 
on this continent" will be "willing and ready at all times 

* * * ivith their lives and fortunes to assert and maintain 
the rights and interests of your Majesty, and of our Mother 
Country." 

In subscribing the "Test Oath," adopted by the Korth 
Carolina Provincial Congress at Hillsborough on August 23, 
1775, the members pledged themselves that "we do solemnly 

* * * engage under the sanction of virtue, honor and the 
Sacred love of liberty * * * to maintain and Support" the 
laws of the Continental and Provincial Congress." 

From these random excerpts it will be seen that Jefferson 
did -not have anything left of his closing phrase in the Decla- 
ration to originate even if it had not been used in the Meck- 
lenburg Declaration. 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 53 

Here is a curious illustration of the fallaciousness of imput- 
ing plagiarism in the employment of words or phrases likely 
to have been in common use at this period. In Resolve 1 of 
the Mecklenburg Declaration occurs the phrase ''inherent and 
inalienable rights of man." In Jefferson's Declaration, as 
given to the world we read, "all men * * * are endowed by 
their Creator with certain unalienable rights." In his manu- 
script draft submitted to Congress Jefferson had written 
"that all men * * * derive rights inherent and unalienable." 
His Congressional editors struck out the word "inherent" and 
gave the passage its published shape. John McKnitt Alex- 
ander and his contemporaries certainly never had seen the 
original rough draft of the National Declaration, yet if they 
plagiarized in this instance, they must have plagiarized from 
the rough draft and not from the Declaration as they had 
seen it in print. Yet Mr. Jefferson, no doubt, counted this 
phrase among the Mecklenburgers' plagiarisms from his 
paper. 



54 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

CHAPTER V. 



CHARGE OF INCONSISTENCY. 



One of the most conclusive argiiments, supposedly, that is 
made against the genuineness of the Mecklenburg Declaration 
of Independence of May 20, 1775, is the alleged inconsistency 
of the conduct of the Mecklenburg leaders subsequent to the 
date of its adoption. It may be said here, once for all, that 
the contention that the conduct of these leaders was incon- 
sistent with the May 20 paper and not inconsistent with the 
May 31st Resolves, which latter Mr. Hoyt finds it necessary 
to support and to claim is so much like a declaration of in- 
dependence in effect as to be "easily mistaken" for such, is 
too palpably strained and fine spun to be tenable. The May 
31st Resolves directed the people to meet and elect officers, 
"who shall hold and exercise their several powers by virtue 
of this choice, and independent of the Crown of Great Brit- 
ain." The only thing that keeps this from, being a declara- 
tion of independence is that it was an act of legislation in 
pursuance of and carrying out the purposes of the declaration 
already made. 

Mr. Hoyt devotes two chapters of his book to this subject 
of inconsistency, Chapters VI and VII, "The Salisbury 
Records," and "An Accumulation of Miracles," respectively. 
The chapter on the "Salisbury Records" has to do chiefly 
with the records of the Salisbury District Court, at the ses- 
sion held June 1 to 6, 1775, inclusive. The Salisbury Dis- 
trict was composed of the counties of Rowan, Anson, Try on, 
Surry, Guilford and Mecklenburg. This court was presided 
over by Hon. Alexander Martin. When on June 1, one day 
after the date of the May 31st Resolves, "the sheriffs of the 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 55 

several counties of the district were called, and required to 
make return of the several venires and other processes com- 
mitted to them," says the court records, "Thomas Harris, 
high sheriff of Mecklenburg, failed to appear." The sheriffs 
of the five other counties in the district were all present. The 
court ordered a fine of 50 pounds imposed on Sheriff Harris, 
"and that he be cited to show cause," etc. 

Later in the day, however, Sheriff Harris appeared and 
returned his venire. Of the seven jurors summoned from 
Mecklenburg only two were present. Hezekiah Alexander, 
Adam Alexander, John McKnitt Alexander (three delegates 
to the May 20 convention), Aaron Houston and John McCul- 
loh, all of whom had been named in the jury writ, did not 
appear. Neither of the two jurors from Mecklenburg who 
did answer to their names were connected, so far as known, 
with the Mecklenburg proceedings. The court imposed a 
fine of 3 pounds each upon the five defaulting jurors. 

Mr, Hoyt finds in these significant circumstances an argu- 
ment to support his theory that the only paper adopted by 
the Mecklenburgers was adopted on the 31st of May and not 
on the 20th of May. He assumes that the meeting of the 
Mecklenburgers was called for the 31st of May, adopts the 
version of the witnesses that there was a two-day convention, 
that it extended over to June 1st, and that Sheriff Harris, 
after attending the militia muster and meeting on May 31st, 
left for Salisbury early on the morning of June 1st before 
"the resolves were publicly read" and in the ignorance of 
what had been agreed on in the convention. Mr. Hoyt says : 

"But it was not because Mecklenburg county had declared indepen- 
dence twelve days before that Harris did not come. In the course of the 
day he arrived in court, and returned his venire. The committee meet- 
ing and militia muster at Charlotte the day before probably detained him, 
and he set out for Salisbury early on the 1st of June and before the 
resolves were publicly read. Hence he came to court ignorant of the fact 
that Mecklenburg had resolved that the King's courts should no longer 
administer justice for its inhabitants." 



56 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

It is a somewhat violent assumpticn that the Sheriff of a 
county should attend an important public meeting such as 
that of the Mecklenburgers and set out to court the next morn- 
ing in ignorance of what had been done. It is exceedingly 
more likely that Sheriff Harris' delay arose from the fact 
that he had not ventured to set forth to attend the King's 
court at Salisbury until after the May 31st paper, which skil- 
fully qualified the state of the county's independence in such 
a way as to continue its courts as a part of the judicial system 
of the Province, had been formulated and adopted by the 
Committee. 

This liberal construction put upon the independent status 
of the county, while sufficient warrant for Sheriff Harris, 
who was not a delegate to the May 20 convention, to attend 
the Salisbury court, did not prevail upon the men summoned 
to serve as jurors who had been delegates to the convention 
and they stayed away. The Alexanders and others of the 
delegates were still imbued with the enthusiasm of the May 
20 Declaration and were holding themselves in leash until 
their messenger should return from Philadelphia with the 
sanction of Congress for their course. For we shall learn from 
contemporaneous documents further along, that some of the 
people of Mecklenburg looked with distrust upon some of their 
leaders in the convention and committee after the insufficient 
results that followed the May, 1775, proceedings and there- 
after pledged these leaders, when acting as their representa- 
tives, to obey implicitly the instructions laid down for them, 
showing that they felt they had in some measure been be- 
trayed. 

It may be said here parenthetically, however, that the 
Mecklenburgers, in the early Revolutionary period, were by 
no means alone in manifesting inconsistencies. An instance 
something similar to that in question occurred in connection 
with Patrick Henry's ringing resolutions in the Virginia 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 57 

House of Burgesses in denunciation of the stamp act. The 
resolutions were adopted and the "next day," says Elson, in 
a foot note, "in the absence of Henry, the resolutions were 
reconsidered, and modified, and the most violent one was 
struck out. But they had been given to the public in their 
original form, and in this form they were published broad- 
cast over the land." (Vol II, 10). 

The burgesses do not appear to have been worried by any 
fear of fixing "an ineffaceable stigTaa to their characters," 
as Mr. Hoyt conceives would have attached to the Mecklen- 
burgers had the politicians among them met eleven days after 
the people, in the ardor of a popular assemblage, had declared 
independence, and drafted a paper which made it possible 
for them to have living relations and intercourse with their 
neighbors, who were not independent. 

The grave injustice done the Mecklenburgers by history and 
historians is here illustrated. When they first declared their 
independence no one outside the confines of the county would 
take them seriously, and ever since the movement which they 
were the first to make resulted gloriously the disposition has 
been to regard them too seriously and to draw the inference 
that they did not declare independence because, in view of 
their environments, they did not rigidly adhere to the terms 
of their bond. To make consistency a test of historical truth 
is to disregard human nature and human experience. The 
politician of the eighteenth century was in all essentials the 
same as the politician of the twentieth century. Take a cur- 
rent instance. In the year in which we are living, the great 
Governor of a great State, in his inaugural address, denounced 
the evil of lobbying in the most drastic terms to an assembled 
multitude of fully five thousand people, and he asked the 
Legislature, then in session, to pass a penal statue, visiting 
infamous punishment upon any person convicted of lobbying. 
Scarcely more than a month from this utterance, in the clos- 



58 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

ing hours of the session of the Legislature which he had 
admonished, this great Governor is found personally engaged 
most diligently in lobbying with the members for the j)assage 
of a measure in which he was interested. 

The thing is simply impossible, Mr, Hoyt would say, ap- 
plying the method by which he claims infallibly to disprove 
the May 20 Declaration by the May 31st Resolves. With all 
due apologies for any seeming profanity, however, it may 
be said that with God and the politician all things are pos- 
sible. 

The writer is satisfied from his reading of the history of 
the times that any one who leaves politics out of the question 
in treating of the Revolutionary period is blessed in the most 
bountiful measure with the saving quality of faith. The 
Revolution appears to him to have begun in a three-cornered 
contest. The Whigs in America disapproved of the Colonial 
measures of the British government as unconstitutional and 
they blamed the ministry for these measures. They pro- 
fessed unfaltering allegiance to George III, but arose in revolt 
against his officers and placemen, who, they believed, or 
affected to believe, were abusing the King's confidence. To 
his Majesty the Colonists were "your humble and dutiful 
subjects ;" to his Majesty's governors, five of whom were in 
flight, they were insolent rebels resorting to "falsehood and 
calumny" to misrepresent his Majesty's officers. The great 
aim of the patriots was to identify the King with our cause 
and sever him from his ministry. Consequently professions 
of loyalty to George and allegiance to constitutional principles 
went invariably together. This was a policy which was 
thoroughly understood and rigidly adhered to by the leaders 
both in the Continental Congress and in the respective Colo- 
nies throughout the year 1775. Anything that threatened 
to contravene this policy was sternly and severely repressed. 
This accounts for the suppression in Philadelphia of any 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 59 

mention of Captain Jack's visit and papers. The British 
Tories were saying at home that the American Whigs aimed 
at independence and the American Whigs retorted that this 
was a "cruel slander." The fight to keep down any pretense 
at independence became therefore a patriotic duty. More- 
over it was playing into the hands of the enemy to talk of 
independence and it was probably resented accordingly. Mr. 
Jefferson marveled that "Mr. Henry's resolutions [opposing 
the stamp act] far short of independence, flew like lightning 
through every paper," while a declaration of independence 
should not have been "heard of." But Henry's resolutions 
were in accord with the policy of the country, which was 
determined not to pay a tax levied on the people by a parlia- 
ment in which they were not represented, and the Mecklen- 
burg Declaration was so far at variance with the policy of 
the country as to have stultified the Congress by that body 
merely receiving and recording it. 

In a sense the Colonies were in closer touch and under- 
standing with each other at this period than the States are 
today. The sentiments of one were apparently, if not really, 
the sentiments of all, and certainly were familiar to all . The 
policy of which we have been treating was as much empha- 
sized by the leaders in North Carolina as in other colonies. 
It is customary for some writers, on occasions, in treating 
of the Mecklenburg Declaration, to branch off to the colony 
generally, confounding the two subjects, when, in fact, no two 
things could be farther apart. Prof. W. E. Dodd, of Ean- 
dolph-Macon College, in his "Life of Nathaniel Macon," 
t'Miches frankly, if somewhat with gloves off, on the politics 
o( the Revolutionary period in North Carolina and the 
country at large. Prof. Dodd says : 

"Whatever may be said of North Carolina's devotion to the cause of 
the Confederacy in 18(50-1865, — and no people ever sacrificed more — it 
can not be said that it gave general and heroic support to the cause of 



60 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

Independence. No State acted, other than a selfish role in that, our 
first war," * * * But the principal cause of this supine support 
of the great national movement on the part of North Carolina was the 
neutralization of the forces of the patriots: (1) By tne effects of the 
War of Regulation in 1769-1771; (2) by the presence of large numbers 
of Scotch Royalists in the middle and upper Cape Fear regions; (3) by 
the opponents of democratic government, i. e., by the influence of the 
determined minority in the assemblies, led by Hooper, Johnston, Iredell 
and others. ***** 

* * * The East was an oligarchy; the West a democracy. The 
two sections could not easily have been brought to live peaceably together 
under the most beneficient laws; so much the worse when the East per- 
sisted in domineering and exploiting the West. ***** ^ very 
respectable party of the Whigs, * * * ^as alienated when men be- 
gan to speak of independence. * * * A similar party existed in 
and about Wilmington, with William Hooper as leader, which was 
ground for Jefferson's later declaration that Hooper was a great Tory, 
and, of course, it was known that all of Hooper's family publicly sup- 
ported the Royal cause. These conservatives were strong enough to 
name the representatives to the Continental Congress during the earlier 
years of the war — Hooper being the leader of the delegation. * ♦ * 

"Geographically considered, the Patriots had actual control of but 
a small portion of North Carolina — the Southside of Roanoke, i. e., a 
section of country containing a population of some seventy to eighty 
thousand people. * * * This cut off from actual co-operation with 
the northern part of the State the bold Mecklenburgers and the Catawba 
backwoodsmen. South Carolina, too, was the home of disaffection, and 
being contiguous to the Royalist counties of North Carolina, the strength 
of the Tories was much increased. 

En all justice, the difficulties created by these environments 
should be considered before censuring or even charging the 
Mecklenburgers with inconsistency. 

Returning to the Salisbury court records, Mr. Hoyt says: 

"On June Gth, the last day of the court, after Captain Jack's papers 
had been read by William Kennon at the instance of the presiding 
judge, Alexander Martin, a staunch Whig, the fine imposed upon the 
Sheriff of Mecklenburg was remitted." 

One would think that Mr. Hoyt inferred that Judge Mar- 
tin remitted the fine of the Mecklenburg Sheriff, after hear- 
ing Captain Jack's papers read, in recognition of the patriot- 
ism of the people of that county. Perhaps he did. Bat one 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 61 

would not ordinarily discover consistency in the course of a 
Royal judge who had a few days previously charged the 
grand jury to inquire into ''^Crimes and Misdemeanors, of 
Treason, and traitorous Conspiracies, which are capital of- 
fences against his Majesty's Person and Government, * * 

* * in short, of all offences, capital or not, having a tendency 

to subvert the good Form or disturb the state of government," 

when this same judge quietly permitted a paper (the May 

31st Eesolves, Mr. Hoyt claims) to be read in his court 

declaring — 

"That all commissions * * * granted by the Crown * * » 
are null and void * * * that the inhabitants * * * do chuse 

* * * officers, who shall hold * * * their several powers by 
virtue of this choice and independent of the Crown of Great Britain 

* * * That whatever person shall hereafter receive a Comr.".ission 
from the Crown, or attempt to exercise any such commission h?r°tofore 
received, shall be deemed an enemy to his country," etc. — 

without instantly ordering the bold herald to be committed 
for contempt of court and directing the grand jury to enquire 
at once into the "traitorous conspiracy" to "disturb the state 
of government" in the county of Mecklenburg in his district 
thus publicly proclaimed. But the only response made by 
Judge Martin to this extraordinary proceeding was to remit 
the fine of the sheriff who had probably taken part in the 
"traitorous conspiracy" hatched in his county and had not 
reported it, so far as the records show. 

The writer is not informed as to whether the notable charge 
delivered by Judge Martin to the Grand Jury of the Salis- 
bury District on the opening of the court June 1, 1775, is 
preserved among the records of Kowan at Salisbury or not. 
Mr. Hoyt and others who have inquired into the "Salisbury 
Records" are silent concerning this charge. But by all who 
heard and knew of it at the time it was esteemed as a note- 
worthy deliverance and quite a deal of complimentary cor- 
respondence passed between Judge Martin and the public 



62 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

bodies concerned in reference to it. This the writer gathers 
from the fact that the charge and the correspondence were 
printed at length in the South Carolina Gazette and Country 
Journal of Tuesday, July 11, 1775, as appears in the files 
of this interesting Revolutionary publication, preserved in 
the Charleston, S. C, Library, Miss Ellen M. Fitz Simons, 
librarian. The charge and the correspondence occupy one 
and a half wide columns of the newspaper. The prjnt is 
very much blurred, more from poor press woi*k, apparently, 
than from age. As much of the Judge's charge as can be 
clearly made out will be reproduced here, as it seems to the 
writer to illustrate the real state of political feeling in the 
country and something of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian sen- 
timent in this immediate section in 1775 as well as it could 
be done. The charge follows: 

"Tiie Judge's charge to the Grand Jury, at a Court o* Oyer and 
Terminer, held at Salisbury, June 1, 1775. 

"Gentlemen of the Grand Jury: 

'You are his Majesty's council for the District of Salisbury, set apart 
on this occasion to accuse such of his Majesty's subjects who a;v guilty 
of Crimes and Misdemeanors done or committed within the same. 

'The important task reposed in you by our happy Constitution teaches 
you how much you ought to prize a privilege that has been the Boast 
of Ages — the Envy of Nations — which our glorious Ancestors waded 
through Seas of Blood to obtain, and compelled even Majesty to ratify, 
by that sacred Palladium of British Liberties, the Grand Charter. 

"This, with other peculiar Rights and Privileges of Englishmen, the 
Sovereigns of Britain, through a long Series of Ages, have plighted 
their Faith by a most Solemn Oath to maintain, and for this Kingly 
Protection the Subject has bound himself by as solemn a tie to liold 
Allegiance and obedience to them as long as they shall continue to hold 
faith with and defend these choice invaluable blessings to their People. 
— This is that great, that recognized Union between the King and hia 
Subjects" (The remainder of this paragraph is illegible to the naked 
eye.) 

Paragraph six deals with the right of trial by jury, but is 
generally illegible. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 63 

Paragraph 7 bids the people to transmit this right unim- 
paired to posterity, but, in the main, it is illegible. 
Paragraph 8, as much as is legible, follows: 

"Let me inform you, gentlemen, through you [illegible] must En- 
quiries be made of Crimes and Misdemeanors, of Treason, and traitorous 
Conspiracies, which are capital Offences against his Majesty's Person 
and Government, misprision of Treason, Murders, manslaughter, [illegi- 
ble] Riots, Routs, and unlawful Assemblies, [illegible] Housebreaking, 
Rapes, Robberies, Grand and Petit Larcenies; in short, of all offences, 
capital or not, having a tendency to subvert the good form or disturb 
the state of government." 

Paragraph 9 is illegible. 

Paragraph 10, so much as is legible, follows : 

"Next gentlemen, Morality and Religion merit your particular care 
and [illegible] guarded by wholesome laws [illegible] of the Reforma- 
tion in which are comprized [illegible] nourished by the Blood of 
Martyrs in [illegible] Popish Tyranny and Superstition [illegible] 
against Popish recusants [illegible] whose every Tenets disgrace the" — 

The remainder of the charge is illegible. 

The grand jury of Salisbury district was so impressed with 
his honor's charge that the body adopted resolutions printed 
in full in this issue of the South Carolina Gazette and Coun- 
try/ Journal formally thanking him for his "learned, loyal and 
edifying charge," and Judge Martin as formally and in set 
terms thanked the jury for its appreciation of his utterances. 

Next "Ten Magistrates of the County of Rowan prayed 
that his Honor "would indulge us with a Copy of your charge, 
which may be useful to us both as magistrates and Friends of 
Liberty" and Judge Martin, under date of June 6, the last 
day of the session, says in answer: 

"Gentlemen of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of 

Rowan: 

"1 thank you for this honorable notice you have taken of my charge 
to the grand jury, and agreeable to your request, gentlemen, shall pre- 
sent you with a copy. Your Loyalty, gentlemen, to the King and at- 
tachment to the constitutional Laws of his government afford me great 
satisfaction, which I make no doubt you will continue to maintain and 
defend to the utmost of your power." 



64 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKQ 

What was the significance of all this solemn flummery, in 
in view of the Jack incident, whether it was the May 20 Dec- 
laration that was read or the May 31st Resolves or both? 
Judge Martin, though a "staunch Whig" held the scales 
evenly, so far as his charge goes, between loyalty to the house 
of Hanover and allegiance to constitutional rights, but it is 
plain his sympathies were so much identified with the popular 
cause that he could not recognize a "traitorous Conspiracy" 
"to disturb the state of government" and "Misprison of Trea- 
son" in the concrete (from the government's viewpoint) when 
the evidences of it were brought into court and flaunted in his 
very face. 

The incident has the flavor of Dickens in its humor and 
solemnity. The scene in Pickwick Papers is irresistibly sug- 
gested : 

"The chairman felt it his imperative duty to demand of the honorable 
gentleman whether he had used the expression that had just escaped 
him in a common sense. Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying that 
he had not — he had used the word in its Pickwickian sense. (Hear, 
hear)." 

Mr. Hoyt refers to some other Salisbury records, viz., of 
the "Committee of the County of Rowan," which on June 1, 
1775, addressed a letter to the "Committee of the County of 
Mecklenburg," asking for an interchange of the proceed- 
ings of the committees, and avowing, substantially, its allegi- 
ance to the House of Hanover and to constitutional princi- 
ples, but as the records of the committee as quoted do not tend 
to prove anything except that the Mecklenburg committee of 
safety and correspondence was so new a body that it had not 
yet had any correspondence with the next nearest committee, 
it is not deemed necessary to take this up seriously. It is 
pertinent to say that it is only another circumstance going to 
show that the Mecklenburg committee which held its first 
known meeting on the 31st of May and made laws for an in- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 65 

dependent government of the county could not have been the 
body that declared independence, self-created and investing 
itself with the powers of revolution, which are lodged only 
with the peoi^le. 

The fact that the committee of correspondence met for the 
first time May 31 explains why the Eowan people had not 
heard of the Mecklenburg proceedings of the 20th of May up 
to the morning of June 1. There was no regular post and 
communication was irregular and infrequent. 

In his chapter, "An Accumulation of Miracles," Mr. Hoyt 
is betrayed into error by an inaccurate use of words. He 
argues from the premise that in matters political men cannot 
profess one thing and practice another in any measure with- 
out exceeding the bounds of their natural powers and invad- 
ing the realms of the miraculous. To him language means 
all it says and cannot be varied from by jot or tittle. Talley- 
rand's maxim has no place in his code of moral conduct. 
Pickwickianism does not exist in his scheme of practical af- 
fairs. But unfortunately both things are common place in 
human experience. And if the judgment of his premise that 
the Mecklenburgers could not have declared independence on 
May 20, 1775, because they did something inconsistent with 
such a declaration at a later date were not false, he still sub- 
verts his own argument in the end by maintaining that they 
did "virtually" and "in effect" declare independence on the 
31st of May, 1775, thus leading the Mecklenburgers into the 
error of supposing they did it on the former date. 

Waightstill Avery, reputed to have been a member of the 
May 20 convention, and in all probability author of the May 
31st Resolves, was appointed "Attorney for the Crown," 
Aug. 2, 1775, Mr. Hoyt says. Just so. Avery's shrewd in- 
formed mind could not fail to grasp the difficulties of the 
situation created by the Declaration and he had anticipated 



66 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

and paved the way for this course, doubtless, in drafting the 
later Resolves. 

The Justices, some of whom had been delegates to the May 
20th Convention, continued to hold the County Court in the 
King's name at the July and October, 1775, terms, and 
later, is another indictment drawn by Mr. Hoyt. The writer, 
who has always known of the Mecklenburg controversy and 
accepted the orthodox version, is free to say that he was stag- 
gered when, at an earlier period in his life he first inspected 
the old Mecklenburg Court records, showing that the Justices 
nominally, at least, continued to hold the Court in the King's 
name. This Was before he had examined into the environ- 
ments of the Mecklenburgers in 1775 and before he enjoyed 
the valued privilege now afforded him by Mr. Hoyt of read- 
ing the rough notes left by John McKnitt Alexander as pre- 
served in fac-simile through the historian, Bancroft's, patri- 
otic care. But the fact was stated explanatorily by Alexan- 
der in his notes which have been so frequently corroborated 
by subsequent disclosures as to have gained for him the unani- 
mous credit of honesty from the objectors to the declaration 
who have impeached pretty much every one else whose testi- 
mony did not accord with their theory. On page 2 of his 
notes Alexander says : 

"Be it remembered. That the within mentioned Committee Men con- 
tinued to act as Justices and were confirmed or tollerated to act in 
their offices by the Counsel of Safety then sitting in Newbern and Wil- 
mington alternately about 177 [not legible] and continued to hold their 
quarterly Sessions in Charlotte as usual," etc. 

And by the way, McKnitt Alexander's words, unlike the 
Talleyrand language, mean all they say, but do not say all 
they obviously mean. In all their declarations of indepen- 
dence and other papers the Mecklenburgers never failed to 
recognize and avow their dependence on and allegiance to the 
Continental Congress and the authorized provincial bodies 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 67 

constituted by the popular side. It was in obedience to this 
principle of loyalty to the patriots and their leaders in the 
country at large that they doubtless consented to modify their 
course and hold their courts in the name of a King whom 
they had repudiated after Captain Jack returned from Phil- 
adelphia with his message from the North Carolina delegation 
in Congress, led by the determined conservative, William 
Hooper, telling them they were ''premature" and admonish- 
ing them to "look to the reigning monarch of Britain as your 
rightful and lawful sovereign." 

It is certain, however, that some of the justices who were 
delegates to the May 20 convention did hold court, in the 
King's name, and if the fact of their doing so after the May 
20 Declaration constituteid a "miracle" it was equally a 
"miracle" for them to have done so after the May 31st Re- 
solves, wherein the Committee decreed "That whatever per- 
son shall hereafter receive a commission from the Crown, or 
attempt to exercise any such commission heretofore received, 
shall be deemed an enemy to his country," etc. 

Again, says Mr. Hoyt, four of the delegates in the Meck- 
lenburg Convention sat in the Provincial Congress, which met 
at Hillsborough, August 20, 1775, and subscribed to the 
"Test Oath." And what was the "Test Oath ?" It was a 
test of fealty to the liberty party, pure and simple, in its 
purposes. It began with the stereotyped and, doubtless, per- 
functory profession of allegiance to the King, "We, the Sub- 
scribers, professing our Allegiance to the King, and acknowl- 
edging the Constitutional executive power of the Govern- 
ment," and then it proceeded in the compass of 174 words, by 
actual count, to say that the subscribers protested against the 
right of the Parliament of Great Britain "to impose Taxes 
upon these colonies," or "to regulate the internal policy there- 
of ;" that "all attempts" to do so "ought to be resisted to the 
utmost;" and "that the people of this province * * * are 



68 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

bound by the Acts and resolutions of the Continental and the 
Provincial Congresses, * * * and we do solemnly and sin- 
cerely promise and engage, under the Sanction of virtue, 
Honor, and the Sacred love of Liberty and our Country, to 
maintain and Support, all and every the Acts, Eesolutions and 
Regulations, of the said Contintn':al and Provincial Con- 
gresses, to the utmost of our powers and abilities." 

The Congress which imposed this oath on its members was 
elected and organized in defiance of a proclamation of the 
royal Go^'ernor, Josiah Martin, issued from the man-of-war 
Cruizer, in the Cape Fear river, on which he was a refugee, 
having been driven from Newbern by some of the members of 
this body. Among the leaders of the Congress were men 
whose names Governor Martin had on July 16, 1775, recom- 
mended to Dartmouth, Secretary for the colonies, to "pro- 
scribe as persons who have marked themselves out as proper 
subjects f(ir such distinction in this colony by their unremit- 
ting labors to promote sedition and rebellion here." Having 
driven the royal Governor from his capital through some of 
its members, this Congress, on the fourth day of the session, 
as appears from the K^orth Carolina Colonial Pecords, ap- 
pointed a committee to formulate a plan of provincial govern- 
ment, made necessary by ''His Excellency, the Governor, re- 
fusing to exercise the functions of government, by leaving 
the province and retiring on board a man-of-war without any 
threats or violence to compel him to such a measure." (This, 
it is to be feared, exceeds the bounds, even, of legitimate 
Pickwickianism). The Congress next directed the Govern- 
or's proclamation forbidding the members to assemble to "bo 
burned by the common hangman." Resolutions were adopt- 
ed authorizing 1,000 troops to be raised in support of the 
popular cause and the Congress capped the climax of its 
Pickwickian performances by receiving "unanimously" an 
"Address to the Inhabitants of the British Empire," laid be- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 69 

fore it by William Hooper, and quoted from by Mr. Hoyt, in 
which the Congress is made, among other things, to say, ''We 
have been told that Independence is our object ; that we seek 
to shake off all connections with the parent State. Cruel 
Suggestion. Do not all our professions, all our actions uni- 
formly contradict this ?" 

Mr. Hoyt deems it nothing less than a "miracle" if the 
Mecklenburg delegates could have subscribed the ''Test Oath" 
under these conditions. But it appears from the journal of 
this Congress that at its second session on April 15, 1776, 
three days after the body had "unanimously" resolved "that 
the delegates for this colony in the Continental Congress be 
impowered to concur with the delegates of the other colonies 
in declaring independence," "William Hooper, [the author 
of the 'Cruel Suggestion' address] and John Penn, Esqs., 
delegates of the Continental Congress, and members of this 
House, appeared, subscribed the test, and took their seats." 
This little Pickwickian performance on the part of Messrs. 
Hooper and Penn escaped Mr. Hoyt's attention, it is pre- 
sumed, since he fails to mention it, but it illustrates how little 
serious emphasis the patriots of North Carolina placed on the 
"profession" of allegiance to the King in the Test Oath. In- 
cidentally, also, Mr, Hooper's "address" indicates the sort of 
pressure that was brought to bear on the Mecklenburgers to 
whip them into line with the Continental policy after Caswell, 
Hewes and himself put the "snuffers" on Capt. Jack and his 
dangerous documents in Philadelphia in June, 1775. 

Mr. Hoyt makes some further quotations from the conser- 
vative leaders in North Carolina intended to prove that no 
one had heard of any declaration or expressed desire for in- 
dependence in this colony, but his authorities, if they prove 
anything prove too much. They only prove that none are so 
deaf as those who will not hear. The conservatives were 
honestly determined on controverting their enemies' conten- 



'?0 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

tion and they overstated their case, as partisans not infre- 
quently do. "The Revolutionary War was pre-eminently a 
war of leaders/' says Prof. Dodd, previously quoted from. 
Revolutions usually begin their rise among the masses of the 
people, and revolutionary sentiment is always strongest among 
them. The generals are always to the rear of the army, and 
especially is this liable to have been the case when the po- 
litical generals of the Revolution were among the judicious, 
the prosperous, the comfortable and well-placed citizens, who 
are naturally chary of making changes. Hooper, Hewes, 
Iredell, and some few others of the political leaders in jSTorth 
Carolina were of this class. Referring to the year 1778, 
Prof. Dodd, in his "Life of Nathaniel Macon," says: "At 
home, James Iredell gave up, this year, a Superior Court 
judgeship because the emoluments were insufficient ; Samuel 
Johnston, his brother-in-law, refused to serve as State Treas- 
urer, though he admitted the emoluments were ample enough. 
William Hooper, too, resigned his seat in the Continental 
Congress. Wise and wealthy men thought it too dangerous 
to be over zealous on either side." Yet, these were the "con- 
servatives," who. Prof. Dodd, in another place, says, "were 
strong enough to name the representatives to the Continental 
Congress during the earlier years of the war — Hooper being 
made the leader of the delegation ; rather, the Patriots made 
this concession in the hope of winning their support and in- 
fluence." 

These men, however, can be termed "leaders" only by cour- 
tesy. The real leaders or fomenters of the Revolution were 
the men in the Provincial Congress at Hillsborough whose 
truculent conduct had put to flight the royal Governor ; whose 
first legislative step was to resolve on protecting from punish- 
ment the unpardoned Regulators who had fought the initial 
battle of the Revolution against unauthorized taxation four 
years before at Alamance ; who burned the Governor's procla- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 71 

mation; who raised troops to fight the royal forces; who set 
up an independent Government, and such like. No wonder 
such actions apf)eared louder to the suspicious British Tories 
than Mr. Hooper's almost lachrymose protestations against 
the "cruel suggestion" that ''independence is our object." 
Perhaps, however, it was for a wise purpose that the Revolu- 
tion should have gained body and headway under cover of 
these asseverations of the conservatives which were honest in 
so far as their individual sentiments were involved. We 
really absolve them from intentional culpability of the charge 
made by Governor Martin, in his proclamation issued from 
Fort Johnston, June IG, 1775, of making their "professions 
of duty and allegiance to the King in order the more eifectu- 
ally to deceive and betray the unwary people into the most 
flagrant violations thereof," however much the ultimate trend 
of events would appear to have borne out the royal Govern- 
or's suspicions. 

So, Mr. Hoyt, reading on the surface and accepting the 
claims of the time at their face value, quotes "a. gentleman in 
North Carolina and one of the Delegates to Congress, appa- 
rently Joseph Hewes," writing a private letter from Eden- 
ton, July 13, 1775, and saying: 

"We do not want independence; we want no revolution, unless a 
change of Ministry and measures would be deemed such. We are loyal 
subjects of our present most gracious Sovereign in support of whose 
crown and dignity we would sacrifice our lives and willingly launch 
out every shilling of our property, he only defending our liberties. We 
can vouch for the loyalty of every one in this part of the province." 

The last sentence is significant. Joseph Hewes had heard 
of Mecklenburg's Declaration. He had helped to smother it 
in Philadelphia in the last week of June, 1775, and about 
the same time, on the 27th of June, 1775, Samuel Johnston 
who was moderator of the revolutionary Congress which met 
at Hillsborough two months later and set up an independent 
Government, wrote him from North Carolina: "Tom Polk, 



72 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

too, is raising a very pretty spirit in the back country (see 
the newspapers). He has gone a little farther than I would 
choose to have gone, but perhaps no further than was neces- 
sary," 

But Hewes' letter was intended honestly, if it was more 
strenuous than candid in designating George III. as "our 
present most gracious Sovereign." Ordinarily the legal 
maxim might apply, "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," but 
political professions cannot justly be held amenable to legal 
maxims. It is perhaps proper to say, however, that Govern- 
or Martin, though a royalist, was an intelligent and honest 
man, and some weight is to be given to his letter to Dart- 
mouth, also quoted by Mr. Hoyt, in which he said "it is 
difficult for the most impartial and unprejudiced mind to be- 
lieve their uniform professions and declarations against any 
views of that nature. . . . Heaven hnows ivJiat are the 
real views of them at large." Mr. Hoyt italicises the last sen- 
tence and accepts it as a profession of ignorance on the part 
of Governor Martin of the views of the people at large, where- 
as, taken in connection with the rest of the quotation, it is 
plainly an intimation that he knew, or believed he knew, 
these were not in entire accord with the professions of their 
leaders. The truth as to the state of mind in the colonies in 
1775 probably lies between the two views. It is not within 
the probabilities that the colonies should have unanimously 
agreed on independence in July, 1776, when as late as 1775 
there was absolutely no conscious movement or aspiration 
among the people for independence. The desire for indepen- 
dence must have been abroad among them, since the spirit of 
independence was prevalent in their conduct, but there is no 
denying that outspoken evidences of it were suppressed with 
masterly skill and determination. 

Mr. Hoyt also quotes James Iredell, of Edenton, "nn As- 
sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 73 

during Washington's administration/' as saying, in a manu- 
script essay, dated June, 1776, "We have never taken any one 
step which really indicated such a view," (view to indepen 
denee). And yet. Governor Martin, in his "long and fiery 
proclamation of August 8, 1775, had denounced the Meck- 
lenburgers for "most traitorously declaring the entire disso- 
lution of the Laws, Government and Constitution of this 
country," and the May 31st Resolves, which Mr. Hoyt says 
were, "in effect a declaration of independence," were "pub- 
lished," he also says, "in every city of the Carolinas where 
there were newspapers, copied into New York and Boston 
newspapers, and suppressed in Philadelphia because it was 
'premature.' " Mr. Hoyt's facts simply refute Mr. Iredell's 
statements in so far as these ignore or deny there was a "step 
"taken" in Mecklenburg with a "view" to independence. 



T4 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUEG 

CHAPTER VI. 



JOIi^T McKNITT ALEXANDER'S EOUGH NOTES. 



The cnix — or supposed crux — of the Mecklenburg contro- 
versy hinges around the fragmentary historical statement and 
copies of the May 20 Declaration left by John McKnht Al- 
exander. It is agreed by all the disputants of whom this 
writer has knowledge that John McKnitt Alexander was a 
scrupulously honest man ; that he was scrupulously honest, 
if mistaken in the memoranda he left of the May 20 proceed- 
ing and Declaration. But we will not rest on the honesty of 
the man or on the honesty of his intentions in making his 
statements. We will rigidly inquire into their essential ac- 
curacy as corroborated by the testimony of collateral circum- 
stances, of contemporaneous history and of witnesses with 
which and whom he could have had no collusion or collusive 
knowledge. We will show that these corroborating facts are 
of such a nature as not only to bear out Mr. Alexander's 
statements, but that they are of such a nature as to preclude 
the possibility of his statements being otherwise than true. 

Mr. Alexander was the custodian of the Mecklenburg Eev- 
oluionary records. He had been the secretary of the May 20 
Convention. There is good reason to believe he succeeded 
Dr. Ephraim Brevard as clerk of the Mecklenburg Committee 
of Safety. He was the friend and intimate of Dr. Brevard. 
When Dr. Brevard, after his fatal confinement in prison at 
Charleston, struggled home to die, it was at the home of John 
McKnitt Alexander he stopped and breathed his last. It was 
in John McKnitt Alexander's keeping that Dr. Brevard left 
at least one other remarkable paper beside the May 20 Dec- 
laration. In the possession of Mr. Alexander's family, 
Foote tells us (Sketches of North Carolina, p. 70.) was pre- 
served for a long time the paper "Instructions for the Dele- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



75 



gates of Mecklenburg County, Proposed to the Consideration 
of the County," written in Dr. Brevard's band, wbicb was 
later entrusted to Governor D. L. Swain's custody. Of this 
paper more will be said in the proper place. 

John McKnitt Alexander always entertained a lively in- 
terest in and appreciation of the significance of the May, 
1775, proceedings in Mecklenburg. His penchant for hoard- 
ing and prizing records is disclosed in the number left by 
him, dealing with the Eevolutionary period, despite the fact 
that the bulk of these records were burned up with his house. 
After the cold reception given their Declaration outside of 
the county the Mecklenburgers might well be excused for not 
making much talk about it. But Alexander, the custodian of 
the papers, talked about it, made copies and placed them 
where he thought they would best serve the purpose of perpet- 
uating the fame of the event. He made a copy of the pro- 
ceedings in 1787 or thereabouts for "Doctor" Hugh William- 
son who was writing a history of North Carolina. He depos- 
ited an account of them with a copy of the Declaration with 
Gen. William E. Davie. Ue carefully filed away another 
copy of his statement and of the Declaration with some old 
and valued pamphlets of the early Eevolutionary period. 
Attached to this was found a torn fragmentary half sheet on 
which was written his first crude notes wherein, after the 
fire in 1800, he sought to recall the salient features of the 
records that had been burned. In 1800 when these notes 
were written John McKnitt Alexander was 67 years old. 
The impressions of the events which he undertook to recall 
were made upon him at the age of 42, when he was in the 
prime of his manhood. There is an illusion of the memory 
in projecting itself over a long lapse of years similar to the 
optical illusion, with which every one is familiar, in casting 
the eye over physical distances. The mile posts merge into 
and become confused with each other, but the prominent 
landmarks stand out clear and distinct. Tn recalling the 
events of twenty-five years previous Mr. Alexander was in- 



76 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

accurate in several instances, in fixing the year of an event 
and the precise names of some of the public men of the day, 
but in the essential points of interest his narrative will be 
found in every case to be correct. It is to be remembered 
that at the time he wrote these notes there was not available 
to him any history of the events in Mecklenburg County, and 
what he wrote was derived from his personal knowledge alone. 

The Mecklenburgers have erected a monument to the men 
of Mecklenburg who made their Declaration of Independence. 
They should erect an individual monument to the memory 
of the man to whose fidelity is due the preservation of the 
facts concerning it. Had he not preserved some written re- 
cord of it those who have proclaimed the May 31st Resolves, 
since discovered, as something greater than a declaration, but 
still not just the thing that is claimed, would have ignored 
that paper as an unfathered record of something that never 
occurred. 

John McKnitt Alexander should have a monument, and on 
it, under the caption, ''WE WEEE PREMATURE," should 
be carved in enduring marble every letter, ellipsis, interlinea- 
tion, erasure, error and correction which appears in his notes 
as faithfully reproduced by Bancroft's copyist. Mr. Al- 
exander's rough notes follow: 

1775 

On the 19* May 1775 {_" 6" was written through 
" J "] Pursuant to the Order of Col? Tho* Polk' 
to each Captain of Militia in his reigment of Meek- sic 
lenburg County, to elect nominate and appoint 2 
persons of their Militia company, cloathed with 
ample powers to devise ways & means to extricate 
themselves and ward off the dreadfull impending 
storm bursting on them by the British Nation &' &^ 
Therefore on s"? 19* May the s'? Committee met 
j/V in Charlotte Town (2 men from each company) 

' The italicised portions are notes in pencil by the copyist. 

Tho. Polk 
* In the original it is written thus : Col. - AJum Alexaiidei. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 77 

or conceived they had 

sic Vested with all powers these their constituents had^&? 

about 

sic After a short conferance ^-el their suffering 

brethren beseiged and suffering every hardship in 

Boston and the American Blood running in Lexing- 

fire 

ic ton &." the Electrical^ flew into every breast and to 

Esquire 
sic preserve order-aad Choose Abraham Alex^ chairman 
Secretary a few 

& J, M'^K. A. After ;srafe^«tx*" Hour free discu!>sion 
in order to give relief to suffering America and protect 
our Just & natural right 

I? We (the County) by a Solemn and awfull 
abjured 
vote, Dissolved our allegiance to King George & th^ 

British Nation. 

2^. Declared our selves a free & independent people, 

having a right and capable to govern ourselves (as 

a part of North Carolina) 

3*? In order to have laws as a rule of life — for our 
sic future Government We formed a Code of laws, by 

adopting our former wholesome laws, 
then 

4*'' And as there was^no officers civil or Millitary 

in our County 

We Decreed that every Millitia officer in s*? County 

should hold and occupy his former commission and 

Grade 

And that every member present, of this Committee 

shall henceforth [torn] as a Justice of the Peace (in 
The original the) Character of a Committee M 
is torn here hear and determine all Controversies agree- 
at all the able to si laws— peace Union 

blanks. & harmony in s*^ County — and to use 

every spread the Electrial fire of free- 

dom among ourselves & u 



73. DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUEQ 

the 
sic 5* AI-&*: &^. many other laws & ordinances were 

then ma after sitting up in the 

Court house all night — neither 

After reading and maturing every paragraph every sit 
sic pai^they were all passed Nem-Con about 12 o'clock 

May 20.^t%o ij-js ' 

But in a few days (after cooling) a considerable 

part of s*^ Committee Men conveened and employed 

Capt" James Jack (of Charlotte) to go express to 

Congress (then in Philadelphia) with a Copy of all 

resolutions and 

3 
s** Laws &• and a letter to our ^members there, sic 

W™ 

sic Rich*? Caswell, ^ Joseph -Hooper & Joseph Hughes in sic 

order to get Congress to sanction or approve them 

&=. &": 

Capt" Jack returned with a long, full, complasent 

letter from s*? 3 members, recommending our zeal 
sic recomm e nding perseverance order & forbearance &*^. 

— (We were premature) Congress never had our s*? 

laws on their table for discussion, though s*^ Copy 

was left with them by Capt" Jack. 



sic N. B: about 1785 ["5" was changed to *' 7 "] 
iT^^rDoctor Hugh Williamson (then of New York ; 
but formerly was member of Congress from this 
T^e original state) applied 

is here above by Col° W" Polk, who was then 
torn compiling a 

in order to prove that the American people 

in the Revolution and that Congress 
were com 



* This is written so in the original. 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 7 

N. B. allowing the 19'^ May to be a rash Act 
The original effects in binding all the middle * west 
is here firm whigs — no torys but 

torn. not fully represented in the first 

2d page 

Be it remembered. That the within mentioned 
Committee Men continued to act as Justices and 

or tollerated to act 
were confrrmed^ in their offices by the Counsel of «<. 

then sitting 
Safety in Newbern & Wilmington alternately about 
Tjj [not legible] and continued to hold their quarterly 
Sessions in Charlotte as usual and no appeala from tw 
s? Justices — for they had the confidence of the peo- 
ple and stich was the Enthusiisro of the people at sic 
large "that whatever was the voice of the People 
was the voice of God " all was submission. Thus 
matters were carried on when lord Cornwallis was 
in Charlotte in the fall of 1780 — "He was in a 
Hornets-nest ' no communications to, or from but 
the great Cambden road — all firm whigs — but s^ 
[not legible] and they dare not move nor Cheap. sit 

or 2I ' 

And the first Court held in Charlotte after 
lord Cornwallis retreated retrograded or run away 
from Charlotte, the Court adjourned or rather ap- 
pointed a Special Court of Enquiry — which set by 
regular adjournments at Charlotte — 'at Col° James 
Harris — at Col? Phifers one week at each place — to 
which places all suspicious persons were brought 

under Guard — formally tried — some from Lincoln 

and 

& Rowan Countys-i^fc even Booth^ — Dunn (lawyers) 

from Salisbury were convicted and ordered off under 

Guard with several others — 
4rr These severe just — tho arbitary measures were 
sic the cause of peace \torn\ the County untill Jniy"4 



80 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

1-f*- the fall of 1777 when our first ^orn] embly 
met in Newbern in the State of North Carolina and 

nearly all that was done 
confirmed [/<?;'«] proved ^ al l we h a d done . New State sic 

commissions then issued &^ \jorn] fficers as they 
yet do — see the laws of s^ session of 1777. 

[torn] & foregoing extracted from the old 

minutes &f 

By J MK Alexander 
\torn] ch were the feeling and sympathiteck sensations sic 
of the Mecklenburgers, when they knew their brethren 
of Boston were beseiged by General Gage & in a state 
of Starvation , that in each Capt? Militia company a 
Subscription was signed for their relief — many sub- 
scribed one Bullock — other 2 Joined for one Bullock 
— and none was suffered to sign but what the officers 
sic and leading men admited, & for whom they were 

responsible &' And had there been a plan of gover- sic 
ment for their driving to Boston, ico would have 
been given in the county in one week — the next news 
we heard — Boston had got relief — We were thanked 
for our goodwill — 

And soon afterwards we smelt and felt the Blood 

& carnage of Lexington which raised all the pas- 

sic sions into fur y — which-was-and reveng e which was 

iic the immediate cause of abjuring Great britain on May 

19. t8 1775. 

April I9. 1775. wa the battle at Lexington 



The rest is torn off. 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 81 

These jumbled notes are more suggestive of the truth than 
if they had been written coherently, and they are unimpeach- 
able because of the honesty apparent on the face of them and 
the good faith exliibited in the very errors made. Indirectly 
and without motive they tell many things to the point which 
might have admitted of dispute had they been directly stated 
with a motive. 

Mr. Alexander does not use the word convention, but the 
meeting he describes was a convention. It was composed of 
two delegates from each of the companies, elected by the mem- 
bers thereof. These delegates, he tells us, repeatedly and in 
varying language, were vested with their powers by their con- 
stituents. It is plain the men of Mecklenburg were jealous 
of their political rights and prerogatives. Mr. Alexander 
had been, to more or less extent, a public man throughout his 
career and he knew the character and political proclivities of 
the people he had so often represented. There is other con- 
temporaneous documentary evidence that will be introduced 
later on to show that these people required their representa- 
tives to derive their authority for all their public acts from 
the people themselves. The delegates elected to this conven- 
tion were known as "Committee Men" and ever after they 
constituted, in their entirety, the bench of justices for the 
county, from which a smaller number was selected to form 
the Committee of Safety, which acted as the executive head of 
affairs at this period. The body became more familiarly 
known to Mr. Alexander therefore as the "Committee." The 
order for the election and meeting was issued by Col. Polk 
because up to the date of this convention no committee had 
been formally constituted for this county. Of course the 
Mecklenburgers had held popular meetings and conventions 
before, but the delegations had not been kno-^m before by the 
specific name of "The Committee," nor did they exercise the 

6 



82 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

same powers and responsibilities. ''The Committee" was an 
institution peculiar to the Revolutionary outbreak. "The 
Provincial Convention of August, 1774," says Mr. Hoyt, 
"recommended that conunittees of five persons be chosen in 
each county, but of the few counties which acted upon the 
recommendation, none so far as is known," he says "restricted 
membership to five persons." "Committees now usually 
called Committees of Safety were established in the counties 
and principal towns of ISTorth Carolina in accordance with the 
articles of American Association, adopted by the Continental 
Congress in October 1774." From these general facts Mr. 
Hoyt readily draws the inference that a "Committee of Safe- 
ty" existed in Mecklenburg County prior to May, 1775, but 
he has no data for the inference. He quotes General Joseph 
Graham as saying that it had been the custom to select two 
members from each of the companies at company muster, 
and, "as well as I can remember, it was first practiced in the 
autumn of the year 1774," but this practice, if General Gra- 
ham's recollection was accurate, clearly antedated the creation 
of the Revolutionary "Committee," with the extraordinary 
powers. 

"Rowan County, then adjacent to Mecklenburg, furnishes 
one of the earliest instances," says Mr. Hoyt, of an election 
of committeemen from the county .militia companies," and 
yet the first record Mr. Hoyt can produce of a Rowan Com- 
mittee is "Feb. 8, 1775," just two months and twelve days 
before the Mecklenburg Committee was created. The record 
he quotes proves that the Rowan committee was the first of the 
Revolutionary bodies, thus specifically termed, to be created 
for Rowan County, in accordance with the "Articles of 
American Association." The order for the election as quoted 
by Mr. Hoyt reads: 

"That it be recommended to the inhabitants of Rowan County that 
the several Militia Companies meet together, and each choose a Com- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 83 

mittee Man, which Committee so chosen shall meet at Salisbury the 
first of March, * * * particularly that the said Committee make 
such Resolves or adopt such Measures as may enforce the observation 
of the Resolves of the General Congress and most efl'ectually secure to 
America her natural and political privileges." 

"This resembles the order for the election and meeting in 
Mecklenburg referred to in the Alexander narrative/' says 
Mr. Hoyt. Just so; the only dilference being that the call 
for the election of the Kowan Kevolutionary "Committee" 
was issued by a committee already in existence and the call 
for the election of the Mecklenburg Revolutionary "Commit- 
tee" was issued by Col. Polk in the absence of any committee 
in Mecklenburg to perform the duty. 

On the basis of these facts Mr. Hoyt proceeds to say, "The 
inference, then, to be drawn from contemporaneous records 
and the direct statements of John McKnitt Alexander and 
other witnesses in later years prove that a committee was or- 
ganized in the fall of 1774, that a new committee was elected 
in May, 1775, and that this body was the 'delegation' which 
met in the same month and adopted the resolves which were 
understood to be a declaration of independence." 

From this it appears that an "inference" is sufficient to 
"prove" a whole category of facts, as against the Declaration, 
while the positive testimony of a score or more of eyewitnesses 
in its favor, is required to be backed up with contemporane- 
ous documentary and record evidence in every particular to be 
considered worthy of belief. 

There are these evidences to show that "The Committee" 
was a smaller body and distinct from the entire body of dele- 
gates to the convention or "committee men :" 

The delegation to the convention was too large and un- 
wieldly for the purposes of a business body. The evidences 
show that there could not have been less than eighteen dele- 
egates, and the names of the men later enumerated by the eye 



84 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLEaSTBURG 

witnesses as having been delegates originally numbered thirty- 
two. General Graham said there were thirteen military com- 
panies in the county at the time, which would have made the 
delegation twenty-six. The May 31st Resolves later pro- 
vided that the people should thereafter form themselves into 
nine companies and elect officers and committee men, two for 
each company, which would have limited the subsequent dele- 
gations to eighteen. 

The provincial convention recommended that committees 
of five persons be chosen in each county and the Mecklenburg- 
ers are exceedingly likely to have implicitly followed the sug- 
gestion of this convention. 

The May 31st Resolves carefully and clearly distinguished 
between ''The Committee" and the "Convention" as has been 
elaborately shown. 

In his "Instructions for the Delegates of Mecklenburg 
County" Dr. Ephraim Brevard, the clerk of the Mecklenburg 
committee, in paragraph 9 said, "You are instructed to vote 
that all claims against the public, except such as accrue upon 
attendance on Congress or Convention, be first submitted to 
the inspection of a committee of nine or more men. * * * 
for which purpose you are to move and insist that a law be 
enacted to empower the freemen of each county to choose a 
committee of not less than nine men," showing that "The 
Committee" in Mecklenburg, one of the duties of which, as 
laid down in the May 31st Resolves, was to manage the 
finances of the county, was a body of less than nine men and 
that Brevard was dissatisfied with it on account of the small- 
ness of its number. Foote, who first published the "Instruc- 
tions," said the paper "bears the date September 1, 1775," 
but Governor D. L. Swain in a letter to Tossing in 1851, 
(Tompkins History of Mecklenburg, p. 48) said "The In- 
structions * * * should bear date in September, 1776, in- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 85 

stead of 1775. i have the original papers before me." Hoyt 
notes and contirms this correction. 

John McKnitt Alexander in his crude notes says, with 
reference obviously to the May olst meeting: "But in a few 
days (after cooling) a considerable part of sd Committee Men 
conveened,"" etc. 

In his later more connected account of the May, 1775, pro- 
ceedings Alexander said explicitly it was provided by the 
convention that "A selection from the members present shall 
constitute a Committee of public safety for sd County." 

The next disputed question touched upon in Alexander's 
rough notes is that as to the secretary to the convention. It 
is found to be essential to the contention of the opponents of 
the Declaration that Brevard was the clerk of the convention, 
since he signed the May 31st Resolves as ''clerk." Mr. A. 
S. Salley, Jr., who reviews the Mecklenburg controversy, in- 
cluding .Hoyt's work, under the title of the ''Present Status of 
the Question" for the current number of the American His- 
torical IJeview, October, 1907, holds John McKnitt Alexan- 
der to be a "careful and honest man" passes his rough auto- 
graph notes without impeachment, treats the claim that "John 
McKnitt Alexander was the secretary of the body that passed 
the Declaration" as a mere "tradition" and quotes and en- 
dorses Prof. Phillips' statement, made in a letter to Draper, 
that "Tliere is no evidence that John McKnitt Alexander 
claimed for himself the secretaryship in 1776." This only 
goes to sliow" that Mr. Salley did not examine closely the evi- 
dences before him, evidences which, ]>v the way. Prof. Phil- 
lips was apparently in ignorance of. In his notes, as we have 
seen, Alexander said the meeting chose "Abraham Alex Es- 
quire chairman and J. McK. A. secretary." "Secretary" was 
written above the line and over Alexander's initials as though 
he at first hesitated from modesty to name himself as this of- 



86 DEFENCE 0¥ THE MEOKLENBUHG 

licer and afterwards saw the necessity of doing so to complete 
the sentence. 

As Mr. Hoyt says "Care was taken bj [Bancroft's] copyist" 
(who made the facsimile of Alexander's rough notes presented 
by Hoyt) "to reproduce every line and letter as it appeared in 
the orig;inal and he imitated the handwriting in several 
places." Hoyt, in another place, says "It is also evident 
that the copyist noted the most conspicuous erasures and it 
seems to have been his purpose to note everything of that na- 
ture," and that no "diversity of handwriting is noted by the 
copyist." In the facsimile of the writing the initials of Al- 
exander occur in the jjlace where the name of the "secretary" 
of the convention would regularly occur. There is no evi- 
dence of any erasure and the w^ord "Secretary" is the one out 
of line and written over the initials in Alexander's band. 
When the question was first raised in 1830, Gen. Joseph Gra- 
ham and Rev. Humphrey Hunter stated positively that John 
McKnitt Alexander was secretary William B. Alexander 
wrote to Nathaniel Macon, February 7, 1819, his belief that 
his father "acted as secretary." 

"Secretary" was the usual term for this officer in a conven- 
tion and "clerk" was the proper term for the officer of a com- 
mittee, jilexander was secretary of the convention and Bre- 
vard was clerk of the committee. There is no conflict in this 
state of fncts. 

When the Mecklenburg Declaration was first put in print 
it was denounced as "spurious," "fictitious," "a fabrication" 
out of the whole cloth. Then the event was established by the 
testimony of a score of unimpeachable eyewitnesses. This 
closed the mouth of skepticism until the May 31st Resolves 
were discoivered. After this paper was brought to light the 
opponents of the Declaration adopted the argument that while 
John McKnitt Alexander was honest in his belief he was mis- 
taken ; that the county did not declare its own independence, 



DECLARATION OF IKBKPEJSTDEJSrCE. 87 

but that the people met and solemnly declared in- 
dependence of the American colonies. In Mr. Alex- 
ander's notes as we shall follow them it will be shown 
that he ha.s not in the smallest essential particular misstated 
any fact i]i which the records and history of the times (closed 
books to him) give an insight. How, then, should he have 
been mistaken concerning the chief fact of all ? How should 
he say, ''We (the County) "dissolved our allegiance to King- 
George," and "declared ourselves a free and independent peo- 
ple," wheii the county had not done so, but had done all this 
for the colonies ? When he says "in order to have laws as a 
rule of lif(!, we formed a code of laws, by adopting our former 
wholesome laws," the records bear him out. The May 31st 
Resolves themselves bear him out, for the Committee incor- 
porated in that paper, as we have seen, a most remarkable di- 
gest of thei English code of jurisprudence, executing in detail 
the decree: of the convention. The records show the "Com- 
mittee Men" acted as justices of the peace, and here, too, 
"The Committee" carried out the expressed will of the con- 
vention in the May 31st Resolves by defining the jurisdiction 
of the justices and giving them a form of procedure. 

It was "in a few days (after cooling)" that "a considerable 
part of sd. Committee Men convened and employed Captn. 
James Jack of (Charlotte) to go express to Congress * * * 
with a copy of all sd. resolutions and Laws and a letter to our 
3 members there * * * in order to get Congress to sanction or 
approve them, &c., &c." is a statement of the widest possible 
significance. The convention had done its work. It was 
now the province of the Committee of public safety and cor- 
respondence to represent the matter to the General Congress 
in a conciliatory light and submit the form of government 
that had been adopted for its sanction and approval. This 
is what the Committee undertook in the May 31st Resolves. 
Imagine the May 31st Resolves being read and proclaimed 



88 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

as the sense of a popular meeting which had just been inform- 
ed of the bloodshed at Lexington and stirred to action by it. 
Would such a meeting begin by addressing a nice constitu- 
tional argument on the legal status of the colonies to a distant 
body and wind it up with a code of laws for an independent 
government for the county without first having taken some 
action to assert their 'independence and also without once 
referring to the Lexington matter "which was the immediate 
cause of abjuring Great britain?" The proposition is ab- 
surd. 

Capt. Jack went to Philadelphia and returned and Alexan- 
der in 1800 summed up the result in the words ''We were 
premature" and the secret Moravian record of the year 1775, 
written in a foreign, unknown tongue and buried in these 
archives since 1783, was discovered in 1904, one hundred and 
twenty-nine years after giving a succinct statement of the 
Mecklenburg Declaration and concluding in these words: 
"This Congress, however, considered these proceedings pre- 
mature." Could more complete demonstration of the fidel- 
ity of Alexander's memory after twenty-five years be con- 
ceived ? 

"Thus matters were carried on," Alexander tells us, "when 
Lord Cornwallis was in Charlotte in the fall of 1780. 'He 
was in a Hornet's-nest,' no communications to, or from, but 
the great Cambden road — all firm Whigs — and they dare not 
Cheap." 

How does this accord with the tnith of history as written ? 
Footc, in Sketches of ISTorth Carolina, p. .505, says : 

"But notwithstanding the terror of his arms, his lordship found his 
situation in Charlotte, which became his headquarters on the 26th of 
September, to be distressing and humiliating. The reasons given by 
Tarleton are both striking and sufficient. He says, 'Charlottetown 
aflForded some conveniences, blended with great disadvantages. The 
mills in its neighborhood were supposed of sufficient consequence to 
render it for the present an eligible position, and in future a necessary 
post when the army advanced. But the aptness of its intermediate 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 89 

situation between Camden and Salisbury did not counterbalance its 
defects. 

■■ "It was evident, and had been frequently mentioned to the King's 
officers, that the counties of Mecklenburg and Eohan [Rowan] were 
more hostile to England than any others in America. The vigilance 
and animosity of the surrounding district checked the exertions of the 
well-aflected and totally destroyed all communication between the King's 
troops and the loyalists in other parts of the province. No British 
commander could obtain any information in that position which would 
facilitate his designs, or guide his future conduct. 

■■ "The town [Charlotte] and its environs abounded with inveterate 
enemies, etc. 

"After speaking of the almost entire impossibility of obtaining cor- 
rect information concerning the movements of the Governor and Assem- 
bly — the preparations of the militia, and the forces and designs of the 
Continentals, Tarleton dwells at large upon the difficulty of obtaining 
pjovisions while he remained in Charlotte. * * * 'f - ■" »■ * 

■*He says 'the foraging parties were every day harassed by the in- 
habitants who did not remain at home to receive payment for the 
product of their plantations, but generally fired from covert places, to 
annoy the British detachments. Inefl'ectual attempts were made upon 
convoys coming from Camden, and the intermediate post at Blair's 
mill — but individuals with expresses were frequently murdered. An 
attack was directed against the piquet at Polk's mill, two miles from 
the town. The Americans were gallantly received by Lieut. Guyon of 
the Twenty-third Regiment; and the tire of his party, from a loop holed 
building and joining the mill repulsed the assailants. 

■'Notwithstanding the different checks and losses sustained by the 
militia of the district they continued their hostilities with unwearied 
perseverance; and the British troops were so effectually blocked in their 
present position that very few out of a great many messengers could 
reach Charlottetown, in the beginning of October, to give intelligence 
of Ferguson's situation." 

Here, then, is the famed Tarleton corroborating in detail 
one part of Alexander's statement. 

Alexander says "the first or 2d. court held in Charlotte 
after Lord Cornwallis retreated" was a "Special Court of 
Enquiry which set by regular adjournments at Charlotte — at 
Colo. James Harris — at Colo. Phifers one week at each 
place — to which places all suspicious persons were brought 



90 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

under Guard — formally tried — some from Lincoln and Ro- 
wan Countjs — and even Booth and Dunn (lawyers) from 
Salisbury were convicted and ordered off under Guard with 
several others." The old court records at Charlotte confirm 
this statement, with the exception of the last part of it refer- 
ring to "Booth and Dunn." 

Boote and Dunn were two Tory attorneys, who were re- 
ported to have interfered with Capt. Jack at Salisbury after 
the papers he was carrying to Philadelphia were read in 
court there. The Mecklenburg Committee in its political ca- 
pacity had these men brought from Salisbury and after trial 
and conviction committed them to prison. There was a re- 
cord made of the case in the Provincial Congress of August, 
17Y5, before which it was brought by the wives of Boote and 
Dunn and the judgment of the Mecklenburg Committee was 
allowed to stand. This case, of course, antedated the "Special 
Court of Enquiry" to which Alexander refers and with which 
he confuses the Committee of Safety as it was originally 
organized in Mecklenburg in 1775. 

Finally, in the last of his rough notes as preserved, Alex- 
ander, after referring to the siege of Boston, emphasizes for 
the second time the Lexington affair as follows: "And soon 
afterward we smelt and felt the Blood and carnage of Lex- 
ington which raised all the passions in to fury and revenge, 
which was the immediate cause of adjuring Great britain on 
Hay 19, 1775." 

AnJ yet we are asked to believe that this man, whose mem- 
ory was so accurate and tenacious of all other details, was at 
fault in this chief particular, which he twice emphasized. 

The writer is at a loss to know how and why these rough 
notes have been neglected hitherto by the participants in this 
controversy and why they have not before been put in public 
print. He has always known of them in a vague way, but 
until the publication of Mr. Hoyt's work he had never seen 



DECLAKATION OJF INDEPENDENCE. 91 

this historic fragment. Suffice it to say the notes tell the 
story of the Mecklenburg Declaration in a way that never cau 
be successfully impeached. They are the best evidence of the 
proceedings of the convention, in the absence of the original 
records. They are the autograph story of what the records 
contained, told by their custodian and supported by every 
item of material evidence, rightly construed, that has been 
brought to light in the hundred years nearly that the enemies 
of the Declaration have sought to pull down and discredit it. 



92 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 



CHAPTER VII. 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF MAY 20 DECLARATION 



In the cliapter immediately preceding this we made a 
study of John McKnitt Alexander's rough notes of the May 
19-20 convention and its proceedings. After John McKnitt 
Alexander died in 1817 these mutilated notes were found 
among his old papers, stitched together with a fuller and 
more connected account of the proceedings in an unknown 
handwriting. When Nathaniel Macon, in 1819, applied for 
information relative to the Mecklenburg Declaration he was 
furnished through Congressman Davidson with "a full ac- 
count of the disputed event" prej)ared by Dr. Joseph McKnitt 
Alexander from the papers left by his father, John McKnitt 
Alexander. This account, at the instance of Senator Macon 
and of Col. Wm. Polk, was published in the Raleigh Register, 
Friday, April 30, 1819, and gave birth to the controversy that 
has raged ever since. Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander at- 
tached a certificate to the account stating that "the foregoing 
is a true copy of the papers on the above subject, left in my 
liands by John McKnitt Alexander, dec'd." He said also he 
found it "mentioned on file" that a copy of the proceedings 
was sent to Hugh Williamson in New York, then writing a 
history of North Carolina, and that a copy was sent to Gen. 
W. R. Davie." Dr. x\lexander attached the signature, "J. 
IMcKnitt" to his account and certificate. Governor William 
A. Graham in his Address in 1875 said, "Dr. Joseph Mc- 
Knitt Alexander usually omitted his surname in his signature 
because of the commonness of the name Alexander in Meck- 
lenburg, and was frequently spoken of and addressed as M. 
McKnitt.' " Hoyt, in a footnote, says he "has seen several 
of his private letters, all bearing this signature." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 93 

In 1830, when the publication of Jefferson's works re- 
opened the controversy and the State Legislature took the 
matter up and called for John McKnitt Alexander's origi- 
nal papers, Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, in turning these 
over to the body, certified that the rough notes and the ac- 
count in an unknown handwriting "were found after the 
death of John McKnitt Alexander in his old mansion house 
in the center of a roll of old pamphlets. * -^ * * which pa- 
pers have been in my possession ever since." He also said 
that in copying the account he had "always taken from the one 
which is entire, where the other is lost," "meaning without 
doubt," says Hoyt, "that he prepared from them the paper 
published in 1819." 

Dr. Alexander's account of the proceedings and declara- 
tion, as published in 1819, follows the outlines given in his 
father's rough notes, only these are filled and rounded out and 
in some places are attempted to be improved on in a some- 
what bombastic and unnatural style of rhetoric. Incorpor- 
ated in the account are the five resolutions comprising the dec- 
laration. The language and style of the resolutions are su- 
j^erior to the rest of the paper. The resolutions are more 
direct, vigorous, forcible and original. There is some tau- 
tology, but this seems to have been a common fault of the 
time, even the great Chatham, in one of his most finished sen- 
tences, perpetrating the expression "I declare and avow." 
Mr. Hoyt says of the resolutions : ''The style resembles that 
of Alexander's notes and many words and phrases of the nar- 
rative and resolutions nre foimd in the notes, but this is a far 
more scholarly paper." After referring to "the striking ex- 
pressions of the resolutions containing the declaration itself — 
and they are very striking," he repeats with emphasis, Mr. 
Hoyt goes on to say "There are indications that Alexander 
entrusted to some person of greater literary skill than himself 
the work of preparing from his notes a more fitting memorial 



94 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

of the Declaration of Independence," etc. The writer fully 
agrees with Mr. Hoyt in his judgment of the literary char- 
acter of the resolutions and in the opinion that they are writ- 
ten in a style superior to the rest of the paper but the infer- 
ence the writer draws is the plain straight-forward conclusion 
that "the style of the resolutions resembled that of Alex- 
ander's notes" because the notes were what they purported to 
be, a first attempt to recall the substance of the resolutions, 
which were in great measure familiar to Alexander, at a time 
when he did not have a copy of them before him. This 
would appear to be a more tenable inference to draw than that 
a man who had proved himself by every fair test to be scru- 
pulously honest and whom the author himself conceded to 
have been scrupulously honest, should have deliberately lent 
himself to a fabrication in this one instance. 

Mr. Bancroft's copyist was at pains to compare Dr. Alex- 
mder's account as printed and the narrative in an unknown 
handwriting which John McKnitt Alexander left attached to 
his rough notes, and Mr. Hoyt has ingeniously reconstructed 
the manuscript in the unknown handwriting, including the 
variations, from the notes of Bancroft's copyist and the ac- 
count of Dr. Alexander as printed. , Hoyt says : 

"The published document is not quite word for word the same as 
what appeared in the manuscript in an unknown handwriting, but this 
was due for the most part to emendations made when it was first 
printed from Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander's letter to William David- 
son. Colonel Polk's transcript of that letter shows that in copying the 
manuscript in an unknown writing Dr. Alexander inserted 'Resolved' 
before each resolution and 'A. M.' before '2 o'clock' in the accompanying 
narrative, and omitted the words 'civil and religious' in the third resolu- 
tion, a line of the narrative immediately following the resolutions, and 
the word 'up' in the phrase following the omitted line. With these 
exceptions he copied accurately." 

Not quite. There was one other omission made by Dr. 
Alexander which might have appeared insignificant to a copy- 
ist who, at the time, did not regard it as vital to reproduce 



BECLAKATION Ui-' lA'DEPEKDEiNCE. 95 

every word and letter accurately, but which has an important 
bearing on the sequel. He dropped the two lines immedi- 
ately following- the resolutions: "A selection from the mem- 
bers present shall constitute a Committee of public safety for 
sd County." This one sentence holds the key to the problem 
created by the two sets of resolutions, and Dr. Alexander, if 
he could have foreseen the future and designed it, could not 
have dealt the cause of the May 20 Declaration a more insidi- 
ous blow than by leaving it out. 

THIS SENTENCE ANTICIPATED AND AC- 
COUNTED FOR THE MAY 31ST RESOLVES AND 
THE BODY THAT ADOPTED THEM FULLY THIR- 
TY-EIGHT YEARS BEFORE THEY WERE 
BROUGHT TO LIGHT AFTER THEIR LONG SLEEP. 

"A comparison of the foregoing papers," Mr. Hoyt says, 
'^reveals unmistakable evidence that the paper in an unknown 
handwriting was prepared from Alexander's notes." Yet he 
says : "It seems hardly possible that the author of the halt- 
ing, ungrammatical, yet labored, notes could have composed 
the second paper, which evinces an incomparably higher de- 
gree of literary ability, although the two papers have a simi- 
larity of style." 

The similarity of style between Alexander's notes and the 
connected narrative he left attached to them which puzzles 
Mr. Hoyt is unmistakable. The marked vein of bombast and 
the trick of tautology nins through both the notes and the nar- 
rative. Mr. Hoyt's opinion that ''it seems hardly possible," 
one author could have written both is without substance to 
support it. Any one not accustomed to making notes will 
find the result of an attempt to do so "halting," "disjointed,'* 
and "labored." It is a more difficult task than to write a 
connected sentence. The narrative in the unl^nown hand was 
unquestionably the work of John McKnitt Alexander. It 
was an elaboration of his notes. There was a counterpart of 
it (unknown in 1819) in the handwriting of John McKnitt 



96 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

Alexander deposited with Gen. William R, Davie. The nar- 
rative in the unknown handwriting from which Dr. Alexan- 
der copied was corrected in two places by John McKnitt Al- 
exander, showing that it had been copied under his supervi- 
sion and endorsed by him. It is therefore certain that John 
McKnitt Alexander was sponsor for the narrative of the 
Mecklenburg proceedings. 

The writer agrees with Mr. Hoyt, however, in the view that 
John McKnitt Alexander could not have written the resolu- 
tions containing the declaration. And further, the writer 
holds that no mere forger, however ingenious, could in 1800 
have manufactured a paper with verbiage, feeling and senti- 
ment so peculiar to the early Revolutionary period, a quarter 
of a century before, as the May 20 Declaration bears on its 
face. It was true, as John Adams said, that "the genuine 
sense of America" at that period "was never so well expressed 
before, nor since." It is usual for adverse critics to say that 
the Mecklenburg Declaration followed the form of the Na- 
tional Declaration because it contained some phrases in com- 
mon with it which were in popular use at the time, but the 
criticism is gratuitous and imwarranted. There can be noth- 
ing further apart than the essence of the form of the two 
declarations. The ^National Declaration is dignified, argu- 
mentative, calm and contemplative. The Mecklenburg Dec- 
laration is alert, bold and aggressive with instant action. 
The National Declaration begins with philosophic theories on 
the rights of man, the discussion and formulation of abstract 
political propositions. The Mecklenburg Declaration goes 
at once to the heart of the Continental situation : 

"1. That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, 
form or manner, countenanced the unchartered and dangerous invasion 
of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain is an enemy to this Country — 
to America — and to the inherent and inalienable rights of man." 

A study of the language of this opening resolution affords 
the best evidence of the intrinsic integrity of the Declara- 



\ 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 97 

tion. It is not the language of Jefferson's paper. The chief 
thing discoverable concerning it is that it is the language of 
1775 — not the language of 1800. Words belong to and fre- 
quently mark epochs. ''Abet," "abetted," and "abettors," 
"countenanced," "unchartered," "dangerous invasion," "in- 
alienable rights" are words which constantly recur in the pa- 
triotic and political papers of 1775. The entire combination 
of words are electric with and expressive in epitome of the 
history and sentiment of the Continent in the first year of the 
Revolution. The "charter" was a familiar word in the mouths 
of the people. The "dangerous invasion" of it was a concep- 
tion prevalent in this year. The King's ministers were 
charged with abetting the invasion of the charter and the 
chartered rights of the people. The phrase the "unchartered 
and dangerous invasion" was a bold one, smacking of original 
coinage in the first word that marks it as peculiarly belonging 
to 1775. It was clearly beyond the ability of John McKnitt 
Alexander to express himself in English so direct, virile and 
original as this. In 1800 the Constitution had taken place 
of Magna Charta in the public mind and it would indeed have 
been an uncommon forger who in this year should not only 
simulate the patriotic feeling of 1775, but who should speak 
in its spontaneous language. 

"Rights inalienably ours" is a phrase which occurs in the 
Articles of Association adopted by Congress in 1774. 

Here is a significant circumstance: In his rough draft 
never put into print and which was unknown to anybody 
in 1800 and earlier Jefferson wrote : 
"that they are endowed by their 
certain 

Creator with [inherent &] unlienable rights. "^ 

"Inherent &" were cut out and the passage as printed read 
"certain unalienable rights," etc. 

7 



98 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

In the Mecklenburg Declaration the phrase reads "inherent 
and inalienable rights." 

It is apparent that both the author of the Mecklenburg 
paper and Jefferson employed the phrase as popularly cur- 
rent and part of it was "weeded" out in Jefferson's paper 
while it went entire in the Mecklenburg document. 

If the author of the Mecklenburg Declaration looked to 
Jefferson's paper as known for his language how came he to 
add the missing words to the phrase ? 

The second resolution reads : 

2. We the Citizens of Mecklenburg County do hereby dissolve the 
political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country, and 
hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and 
abjure all political connection, contract, or association with that nation, 
who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties — and in- 
humanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington. 

This resolution is filled with the fire and passion of the 
moment rising to a climax in the direct, vigorous denuncia- 
tion of the British Nation "who have wantonly trampled on 
our rights and liberties — and inhumanly shed the innocent 
blood of American patriots at Lexington." Is there anything 
so direct and passionate in Jefferson's paper ? The tone of 
Jefferson's paper is different. It strove to be judicial and 
dispassionate as befitted the weight and magnitude of the 
question upon which it passed. The Mecklenburg paper gave 
aloose to the indignation of its framers in a natural torrent 
of words and without restraint. Some of the words and 
phrases in this resolution occur in the Jefferson Declaration, 
but they were popular words and phrases of the time and 
they fit naturally in the text of the resolution, showing that 
the resolution was not made to them but that they were em- 
ployed because they best expressed the sentiment of the resolu- 
tion. 

Mr. Hoyt, in pursuance of his apparent theory that John 
McKnitt Alexander engaged some one more skilled to write 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 99 

the narrative and resolutions, quotes the phrases common to 
the two declarations and exclaims in italics : None of these 
expressions are to he found in John McKnitt Alexander's 
notes. And yet Mr, Hoyt had just printed in parallel col- 
umns with this second resolution the first of John McKnitt 
Alexander's notes briefing the resolutions, as follows: 

1st. We (the County) by a. . 
abjured 
Solemn nnd awful vote. ^ Dissolved our allegiance to King 
George & the British Nation. 

And Mr. Hoyt had employed the parallel column to prove 
that the resolutions were based on John McKnitt Alexander's 
notes. 

The third resolution reads : 

3. We do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people, are, 
and of right ought to be, a Sovereign and self-governing Association, 
under the control of no power other than that of our God and the 
General Government of the Congress to the maintenance of which inde- 
pendence, civil and religious we solemnly pledge to each other, our 
mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes and our most sacred honor. 

This resolution contains the bulk of the phrases which Mr. 
Jefferson's friends originally charged the Mecklenburg De- 
claration cribbed from him. As has been shown each and 
all the phrases here used had been used in state papers before 
Jefferson wrote the Declaration and the major portion of 
them, so far from being original with him, were not even 
penned by him in his own draft of that paper. Richard 
Henry Lee first in Congress used the phrase that "these unit- 
ed colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent 
States, and that all political connection between them and the 
State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.'' 
He moved the Declaration of Independence on June 7, 1776, 
in these words and they were debated nearly a month before 
Jefferson's draft of the Declaration was acted on. Doubtless 
the phrase in some shape was in popular use as the conscensus 



100 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

of the sentiment of the country before Mr. Lee offered it for 
the consideration of the Congress. 

The writer has also shown in another place by various cita- 
tions that the phrase "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred 
honor" was a common expression of the time. 

Before dismissing the second and third resolutions, which 
bear the brunt of the charge of plagiarism, the word "Asso- 
ciation," which occurs in both resolutions in connection with 
the central theme of each, must be considered. "Association" 
is a word that belongs intimately to the year 1Y75 and an- 
terior thereto. In ITT-i and 1775 the people in each locality 
""associated themselves for defence against their foes." In 
October, 1774, the Continental Congress had adopted the 
Articles of Association. "The Association" was a household 
term in Mecklenburg County. There is record evidence for 
believing that it was the rule for the friends of liberty in 
Mecklenburg each to sign the Articles of Association. An 
original paper* was furnished byMajor John Davidson, dated 
""Mecklenburg County, ISTovember 28, 1775," signed "Abr'm 
Alexander, Chairman of the Committee of P. S.," in which 
the chairman certified "the bearer hereof, William Hender- 
son, is allowed here to be a true friend of liberty, and signed 
the Association." But the word was already out of date as 
a history-making one in 1776, when the Continental Congress 
had largely succeeded to the responsibilities of the local asso- 
ciations, and it does not occur in Jefferson's paper. And yet 
we are asked to believe that some well-nigh illiterate forger 
of 1800 fitted this epochal word in its place in the Declara- 
tion, bearing, as it there does, the stamp of inspiration and 
spontaneity. 

John McKnitt Alexander's brief of the third resolution is : 

2d. Declared ourselves a free and independent people, having a right 
and capable to govern ourselves (as a part of North Carolina). 

♦State Pamphlet. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 101 

We doubt if Mr. Hoyt with all his scientific skill could 
brief this resolution more comprehensively and succinctly. 
Notwithstanding its tabloid character, however, Alexander 
employed several words which occur in Jefferson's Declara- 
tion. It is obvious, however, that Alexander did not con- 
sciously harbor any designs on Jefferson's document because, 
as Mr. Hoyt points out, he managed to steer as clear of the 
phrases in Jefferson's Declaration as it was possible to do. 

The fourth resolution reads: 

4. As we now acknowledge the existance and control of no legal 
officer, civil or military, within this county, we do hereby ordain and 
adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every of our former laws, wherein, 
nevertheless, the Crown of great Britain never can be considered as 
holding rights, privileges, immunities or authority therein. 

This resolution is strongly marked with verbiage peculiar 
to 17Y5 that no mere forger in 1800, who had not been an 
actor in 1775 and consequently intimately familiar with the 
state papers of that year, could by any possibility have man- 
ufactured. Parenthetically it is to be remembered that the 
records of 1775 and 1776 to which we of today have access 
were closed books to those of the generation in 1800 who were 
not familiar with them at first hand. In the "Test Oath" 
formulated with the help of some of the members of the Meck- 
lenburg convention of May 20 and signed at Hillsboro, August 
23, 1775, is the following significant phrasing: "And we do 
solemnly and sincerely promise and engage, under the Sanc- 
tion of virtue, Honor, and the Sacred love of Liberty and our 
Country to maintain and support all and every the Acts, 
Resolutions," etc. 

This marked phrasing occurred notably in one other paper 
of this period, in Dr. Ephraim Brevard's "Instructions." 
Section 5 begins "You are instructed to vote that all and 
every person," etc. Also a cognate idea with "the Crown 
of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights. 



102 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

privileges, immmiities or authority therein" is found in his 
instruction "to vote for the Execution of a civil government 
under the authority of the People for the future security of 
all the Rights, Privileges and Prerogatives of the State," 
etc. In the resolutions adopted by the first continental Con- 
gress in 1774 reference is made to the "immunities and privi- 
leges granted and confirmed to them [the people] by the royal 
charters." 

The fifth resolution reads : 

5. It is also further decreed, that all, each and every military officer 
in this county, is hereby reinstated to his former command and authority, 
he acting conformably to these regulations. And that every member 
present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz: a 
Justice of the Peace, in the character of a "Committee Man" to issue 
process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, according to 
said adopted lavps, and to preserve peace, and union, and harmony, in 
said county — and to use every exertion to spread the love of country 
and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more general and 
organized government be established in this province. 

In this resolution is repeated the pet phrase "all, each and 
every," denoting an ear mark of the author. Mr. Hoyt finds 
a significant circumstance in the quotation marks enclosing 
the words "Committee Man." His theory is that the skilled 
writer to whose hands John McKnitt Alexander committed 
the task of waiting out the narrative and Declaration based 
on his notes, and which skilled writer nevertheless followed 
Alexander in committing all the minor errors discoverable in 
the notes was unfamiliar with the words "Committee Man," 
(words belonging peculiarly to 1775) and that he sig-nificd 
this by putting them in quotation marks. Mr. Hoyt presents 
this copy of the Declaration as the "Davie Copy." It ap- 
pears from the facts collated that it was a copy made by an 
unknown copyist from the original Davie draft under Mr. 
Alexander's supervision. It is evident that a mere copyist 
would fall into Mr. Alexander's errors and put the words 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 103 

"Committee Man" interrogatively in quotation marks, while 
the skilled writer Mr. Hoyt theorizes about, in his effort to ex- 
plain the superior literary character of the resolutions, would 
neither be ignorant of the meaning of "Committee Man" or 
repeat the patent errors made by Alexander. It remains to 
be said of the fifth resolution that the records of the county 
show that the provisions made therein were acted on in the 
conduct of the local government. 

So much for the internal evidence of the resolutions in de- 
tail comprising the May 20 Declaration. Taken as a whole 
with the narrative in which they are incorporated they pre- 
sent an interesting study in literary character. John Mc- 
Knitt Alexander was a land sui'veyor. He was thrown in 
the way of becoming familiar with the technical language of 
deeds. Later he was an officer of the court, he acted as clerk 
from time to time and held the ofiice of Justice of the Peace. 
He acquired a smattering of legal phrases. He had a taste 
for composition, but not a high order of talent. He inter- 
larded his sentences with the word "said" in the legal fashion. 
His more ambitious rhetorical efforts inevitably degenerated 
into bombast. The narrative part of this history of the 
Mecklenburg Declaration as originally printed is quite in 
keeping with his style. The resolutions are of a different 
order of merit. Tautology is the only technical fault to be 
found with them. The vein of bombast disappears in them 
absolutely. The word "said" occurs in them but in one in- 
stance and then not unnecessarily. John Mclvnitt Alexan- 
der, it is clear, did not write the May 30 Declaration. 

Dr. Ephraim Brevard is the reputed author of the Mecklen- 
burg Declaration. The eye witnesses say he was the chair- 
man of the committee on resolutions and, for his "known tal- 
ent for composition," was selected to write them. Mr. Hoyt 
and all historians and students of this event unanimously 
agree that Brevard was the author of the paper put forth by 
the May, 1Y75, convention. 



104 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

What other evidence is there that Dr. Brevard wrote the 
Declaration ? 

The ear marks of Dr. Brevard are written through and 
through the May 20 resolutions. There is not an ear mark 
of Dr. Brevard in the May 31st Resolves. 

Dr. Brevard's style was to go at once to the heart of his 
subject, without preliminary flourish. Waightstill Avery's 
manner was to introduce his resolutions with a preamble. 
Instances : Brevard begins his notable "Instructions" with the 
figure 1 and the words "You are instructed." Waightstill 
Avery drew the act passed in 1777 incorporating the Queen's 
Museum College under the name of Liberty Hall Academy. 
The act is introduced with the preamble "Whereas the proper 
education of youth in this part of the country is highly neces- 
sary," etc. The May 20 Declaration plunges at once into the 
subject without other introduction than the figure 1. The 
May 31st Resolves are introduced with a preamble setting 
forth the legal status of the colonies, in view of the alleged 
abdication of George the Third. The Declaration is Bre- 
vard's style. The May 31st Resolves is Avery's style. 

Note the passages in common between the Declaration and 
Dr. Brevard's "Instructions." The phenomena begins with 
the first sentence and involves the famous Lee resolution: 

"1. You are instructed to vote that the late province of 
North Carolina is and of right ought to he, a free and inde- 
pendent State/' etc. 

In section 2 occurs the phrase already noted '"^ Rights, Priv- 
ileges and Prerogatives" and the further phrase "unalienable 
Rights/' claimed as Jefferson's exclusive property. 

In Section 5 occurs the phrase ''all and every/' 

Section 7 begins with, "You are instructed to move and in- 
sist that the people you immediately represent be acknowl- 
edged to he a distinct county of this State as formerly of the 
late province, with the additional privilege of annually elect- 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 105 

ing in their own officers, both civil and military, together with 
the election of Clerks and Sheriffs, by the freemen of the 
same." This insistence on local autonomy in itself sustains 
the Declaration as against the May 31st Resolves as the gen- 
uine expression of the people of Mecklenburg. This sentence 
has significant bearings which will be referred to again. 

Section 9. "You are instructed to vote that all claims 
against the public * * * be first submitted to the inspection 
of a committee of nine or Tnore men * * * to choose a com- 
mittee of not less than nine men," indicates that "The Com- 
mittee" in Mecklenburg that authorized the May 31st Resolu- 
tions was a body of less than nine men and not a delegation 
of from twenty-six to thirty-two, such as constituted the May 
1775 convention. 

Section 10 instructs the delegates to the Provincial Con- 
gress "to refuse to subscribe any ensnaring tests," probably 
an echo of resentment against the delegates for subscribing to 
the "Test Oath" at Hillsborough after the adoption of the 
Mecklenburg Declaration. 

Section 13 instructs the delegates to vote for the "estab- 
lishment of the Christian Religion as contained in the Old 
and New Testaments * * * and that the full and free and 
peaceable enjoyment thereof be secured to all and every con- 
stituent member of the State as their unalinahle right as 
Freemen," for the second time employing one of the phrases 
appropriated by Jefferson. 

It is certain, then, that Dr. Brevard in his "Instructions" 
in September, 1776, employed the words ''is and of right 
ought to he, a free and independent State," and the phrase 
''unalienahle Rights" twice without enclosing either in quota- 
tion marks. Was Dr. Brevard a plagiarist or forger? He 
was not so reputed. In 1819, a paper reputed to have been 
written by Dr. Brevard in May, 1775, containing these 
phrases was first made known generally to the world through 



106 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

the public prints, and the charge was immediately made that 
it was plagiarism and forgery. What is the explanation? 
In 17Y5 and 1776 these phrases were a part of the parlance 
of the day. JSTo one quoted them because they were common 
property. In 1819 they were remembered by the public en- 
tirely in connection with Jeiferson's Declaration and Jeffer- 
son himself imagined he had originated them, which we now 
know that he had not. 

Brevard was at once a rigid professor of Presbyterianism 
and a stickler for freedom of conscience and choice of creeds 
within the Protestant Christian pale. He coupled the Chris- 
tian and the citizen together in his state papers. He could 
not write a state paper without making reference in some 
part of it to religion. In resolution 3 of the Declaration he 
wrote "under the control of no power other than that of our 
God and the General Government of the Congress, to the 
maintainance of which independence, civil and religious, we 
solemnly pledge," etc. Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander in 
copying the Declaration, among his more than impartial omis- 
sions, dropped the significant words "civil and religious" 
which thanks to Bancroft's copyist is restored to us complete. 
Brevard devotes two of his longest sections of the "Instruc- 
tions" to "religious" liberty. Sections 13 and 14. 

"14. You are instructed to oppose to the utmost any par- 
ticular church or set of clergymen being invested with power 
to decree rites and ceremonies * * * You are also to oppose 
the establishment of any mode of worship to be supported to 
the opposition of the rights of conscience. * * * You are 
moreover to oppose the establishing of an ecclesiastical su- 
premacy in the sovereign authority of the State." 

It is scarcely within the bounds of probability that an au- 
thor who in 1776 gave religion such prominence in a state 
paper as here shown should have framed a more lengthy paper 
on similar lines in 1775 and never once have made the most 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 107 

distant reference to God or religion in its entire context. But 
this is what Brevard did if he wrote the May 31st Kesolves 
and not the May 20th Declaration. But here is marked dis- 
tinctly the cleavage between the personalities of Waightstill 
Avery and Brevard, the two foremost intellectual entities 
shaping the proceedings of the Mecklenburgers in May 1775, 
and in some measure counteracting each other. Brevard's 
was a blended descent from French Huguenot and Scotch- 
Irish extraction, which sufficiently accounts for his strong pre- 
dilection for Presbyterianism and his clear-cut pronounced 
views on religious liberty. Lyman Draper says the Averys 
were an English family of a Hungarian origin. Waigntstill 
Avery doubtless laid little stress on the religious proclivities 
of his Scotch-Irish fellow citizens, but he was the "shrewd" 
clear-sighted lawyer, shaping affairs as far as he could to prac- 
tical ends. It was he who codified the English practice into 
a system of government for the independent county and gave 
it a plausible setting in the memorial of May 31st to Congress 
wliich he hoped might commend the revolutionary proceedings 
to the approval of Congress. 

Governor D. L. Swain said "So far as Mecklenburg was 
concerned, the war of the Revolution was a war waged mainly 
for religious liberty, and this was the seminal principle which 
niade it 'the most rebellious county in America.' " 

And yet the May 31st propagandists would have us believe 
that the Mecklenburgers took their first step in inauguration 
of this war on the heels of the Lexington battle without once 
referring to Lexington or religion in their proceedings. 



108 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 



CHAPTER VIII. 



DAVIE COPY AND CHARGES OF FORGERY. 



In 1819 when the account of the May 20 proceedings and 
Declaration in Mecklenburg was published to the world in 
the Raleigh Register Dr. Joe McKnitt Alexander, the son, 
copied the account from a paper in an unknown handwriting, 
corrected in two places by his father and left by him attached 
to his rough notes. Dr. Alexander in certifying to th.2 cor- 
rectness of the copy made by him said he found it "mentioned 
on file * * * that a copy was sent to Gen. W. R. Davie." 
In 1820, after the death of Gen. Wm. R. Davie, Dr. Samuel 
Henderson, the clerk of the Mecklenburg Superior Court, 
"in searching for some particular paper" among Gen. Davie's 
papers "came across" the Davie copy. "Knowing the hand- 
writing of John McKnitt Alexander," said Dr. Henderson, 
in his certificate to the legislative committee in 1830, he 
"took it up and examined it. Maj. Davie [son of Gen. 
Davie] said to me (when asked how it became torn) his sisters 
had torn it, not knowing what it was." Dr. Henderson also 
certified that after finding the Davie copy he gave it to Dr. 
Joe McKnitt Alexander. "This paper is somewhat torn, but 
is entirely legible," said the committee in its report to the 
General Assembly at the session of 1830-31. Dr. Joe Mc- 
Knitt Alexander in his certificate given at this time to the 
legislative committee said : 

"As to the full sheet being in an unknown handwrite, it matters not 
who may have thus copyed the original record; by comparing the copy 
deposited with Genl. Davie they two will be found so perfectly the 
same, so far as his is preserved, that no imposition is possible — the 
one from the same original as the other is conclusive." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 109 

Governor Stokes in his preface to the State Pamphlet re- 
viewing the evidence adduced, said of the Davie copy: "This 
identical copy, known by the writer of these remarks to be in 
the handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander, one of the sec- 
retaries of the Mecklenburg meeting, is now in the executive 
office of this State." The preface to the State pamphlet was 
written for Governor Stokes by Hon^JP;s..,„L..,jSwam^ subse- 
quently himself Governor. The above statement as to the 
identity of the Davie copy and its having been in the hand- 
writing of John McKnitt Alexander, is therefore here 
vouched for by two Governors of the State. Later Governor 
Swain had custody of all the papers which were in evidence 
before the Legislature. Judge Romulus M. Saunders deliv- 
ered an address on the Mecklenburg Declaration at Wake 
Forest College in 1852. Hoyt says: "When preparing this 
address Judge Saunders examined all the documents on the 
Mecklenburg Declaration then in the possession of Governor 
Swain." Judge Saunders described the Alexander manu- 
script as 

"Two papers, furnished by Dr. Alexander, who certifies that they 
were found by him among some old pamphlets of his father's, the one 
a half sheet in the handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander, the other 
a full sheet in some unknown hand. These papers were stitched together ; 
the half sheet is an old paper, and from its appearance, I should say 
in all reasonable probability is the oldest manuscript we have of the 
meeting of May, 1775. The other sheet gives the same statement and 
resolutions as published, anrf has one or two corrections, in the hand- 
writing of John McKnitt Alexander." 

In 1851 Governor Swain, then president of the North Car- 
olina University, in a letter to the historian Lossing replying 
to his inquiries about the Declaration, sai^"The Davie paper, 
as we call it, shown to be in the handwriting of John McKnitt 
Alexander, in whose house the original was burned in April, 
1800, was written in September, 1800, about five months af- 
ter the destruction of the records." 



110 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Dr. Foote, in his Sketches of North Carolina, says Judge 
Duncan Cameron told him he was "well acquainted with Mr. 
Alexander," that "Revolutionary matters were frequently the 
subject of conversation" between them, that "some time after 
the fire that consumed Mr. Alexander's dwelling and many 
of his valuable papers he met the old man in Salisbury. Re- 
ferring to the fire Mr. Alexander lamented the loss of the 
original copy of the document, but consoled himself by saying 
that he had himself given a copy to Gen. Davie some time be- 
fore which he knew to be correct, 'so,' says he, 'the docTiment 
is safe.' " 

Governor Swain in a letter to Mr. Bancroft in 1858 said 
"I know no living man whose testimony is entitled to higher 
consideration than that of * * * Judge Cameron." 

In 1858 Governor Swain, answering a letter from H. S. 
Randall, who was writing a life of Thomas Jefferson and 
wrote Swain an enquiry about the Mecklenburg documents, 
said: 

"You remark that the main question, so far as Mr. Jefferson is con- 
cerned, is this: "Is the Alexander copy of the Mecklenburg Resolutions 
genuine?' The paper is unquestionably genuine. I have it before me, 
in the well-known handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander." 

One of the earliest and bitterest of the defenders of Jeffer- 
son from the implication of plagiarism, in view of the Meck- 
lenburg Declaration, which, in common with Jefferson's own 
paper, employed the phrases of the Lee resolution and other 
current phrases of the time which the author possibly of 
neither declaration originated, and which Jefferson assuredly 
did not originate, was Prof. Charles Phillips, of the ISTorth 
Carolina University. Prof. Phillips "enjoyed the privilege 
of examining the originals of all these documents when they 
were in the possession of Governor Swain," says Mr. Hoyt. 
Prof. Phillips is the authority for the John McKnitt Alexan- 
der "memory" certificate which Mr. Hoyt accepts absolutely. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Ill 

Prof. Phillips in bis letter to Paul B. Means, in 1879, stated 
that the Davie copy was entire when Governor Swain first 
saw it. Mr. Hoyt asserts that Prof. Phillips was in error 
in this latter statement, but he does not offer anything in evi- 
dence as to the error. 

Here, then, were Governor Stokes, Governor Swain, Prof. 
Phillips, the legislative committee who examined the evi- 
dences, and the whole world, or so much of the world as was 
concerned in learning the truth about it, through the invita- 
tion of Dr. Alexander to compare the copy in the unknown 
handwriting with the Davie copy and see that they were 
"perfectly the same," sponsors for the good faith of Dr. Joe 
McKnitt Alexander in the claim that the copy of the paper as 
furnished by him was true to the original in John McKnitt 
Alexander's handwriting. Dr. Alexander could do no more 
than exhibit the two papers and invite the whole world to in- 
spect them. Those immediately concerned did inspect them 
and put on record in the most solemn manner the truth of Dr. 
Alexander's statement. 

But in the face of the establishment of these facts by a 
public investigation and by the unimpeachable declarations 
of men like Governor Swain and his compatriots, there have 
been those to charge Dr. Joe McKnitt Alexander with forgery 
in connection with the history of the Declaration. Prof. 
Phillips, who was a great admirer of Jefferson, was indig- 
nant at "the assertion or insinuation that Jefferson borrowed 
from Mecklenburg." He was suspicious of some of the era- 
sures and interlineations made in the original papers already 
refen"ed to, and he distrusted Dr. Alexander because, as he 
said, these showed "that the younger Alexander tried to set 
forth a poem in Alexandrian measure." H he made any 
such attempt it was a work of supererogation on the part of 
Dr. Alexander, for the "Alexandrian measure" certainly did 
not need any meretricious help to make it prominent in the 



112 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

Mecklenburg event. But Prof. Phillips, who had the papers 
before him, despite his suspicions of Dr. Joe McKnitt Alex- 
ander and his animosity to the Mecklenburg Declaration, said 
the Davie paper and the paper in the unknown handwriting 
were "identical with respect to the resolutions" as Mr. Hoyt 
admits. "His letter to Randall and the manner in which the 
Raleigh Register's copy of the resolutions prepared by Dr. 
Alexander from the manuscript in an unknown handwriting 
are treated, in his article in connection with the certificate of 
the Davie paper, evince his [Phillips'] belief that with the 
exception of the 'Alexandrian measure' the Davie paper origi- 
nally contained what appears in the manuscript in an un- 
known handwriting." 

Mr. Hoyt fairly threshes out this issue with Prof. Phillips, 
after an exhaustive study of the originals, and decides it 
against him. He says "The results of the investigation made 
by the ISTorth Carolina legislative committee of 1830-31, 
published in July, 1831, in the State Pamphlet, afford ample 
proof that as much of the mutilated Davie paper as remained 
when it was unearthed, which seems to have been more than 
Prof. Phillips found in 1853, agreed in every respect with 
the manuscript in an unknown handwriting. * * * Since the 
committee said it examined all documents which were acces- 
sible, we must believe that it was after making the comparison 
thus invited that it concluded the Davie paper originally con-, 
tained all that appears in the manuscript in an unknown 
handwriting and the honesty of Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexan- 
der can no longer be questioned. The corrections, interlinea- 
tions, and erasures in the manuscript in an unknown hand- 
writing are in keeping with its character as a draft of the 
Davie copy, but certainly out of place in a paper fabricated 
to pass as a transcript of an original record." "Professor 
PhilliD's' cpse cannot be proved bv such flimsy evidence as 
this," Mr. Hoyt says in disnosing of this point. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 113 

But poor Joe McKnitt Alexander has at this late dav en- 
countered a direr foe than the redoubtable Phillips, who was 
restricted in his charges of forgery against him by the evi- 
dence of the documents before him and by an acquaintance 
with and some respect for the fundamental facts in the case. 
The newest champion of the Anti-Mecklenburg cause, who 
signally unmasks Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, is Mr. A. 
S. Salley, Jr., who recently rediscovered the May 31st Re- 
solves in the Charleston Library, originally discovered by 
Dr. Johnson, at the instance of Governor Swain, in 1847, 
and who dubbed these by-laws and regulations "The True 
Declaration." Mr. Salley, as previously mentioned, reviewed 
the Mecklenburg controversy to date, including Mr. Hoyt's 
work, in the American Historical Review for October, 1907. 
He is enthusiastic in praise of Mr. Hoyt's book, which, he 
says, is "the most scholarly work yet presented on this much- 
mooted question and has done it according to the most ap- 
proved methods of the school of scientific history, ^minute and 
accurate investigation, reserved judgment, impartial feeling, 
a fondness for institutions rather than for personalities, and 
a touch of iconoclasm in dealing with the accepted facts of the 
old school. * * * Mr. Hoyt deserves the thanks of the real 
students of history — those who love truth because it is truth." 

But Mr. Salley evidently feels that Mr. Hoyt's "approved 
'scientific' methods" failed in dealing with so desperate a 
case as that of Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander. Mr. Hoyt. 
he objects, failed to positively point out the forger. "He ac- 
cepts in good faith Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander's irrecon- 
cilable statements that the paper had been 'left in my hands 
by John McKnitt Alexander, dec'd' and that it had been 
'found after the death of Jno. McKnitt Alexander in his old 
mansion house in the centre of a roll of old pamphlets,' " is 
Mr. Salley's first astute observation in opening his guns on 
Joe McKnitt Alexander's devoted head. 
8 



114 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBTJKG 

Doubtless Mr. Hoyt understood that when a man died he 
left his goods and muniments in the hands of his heir by op- 
eration of law, and that there was nothing "irreconcilable" be- 
tween Dr. Alexander's statements, made with an interval of 
eleven years between, that his father left the paper in the 
son's hands and that it was found among the papers in his 
old mansion house to which the son succeeded. 
/ Accuracy of statement is not a talent, but an acquirement 
V obtained through practice. For an unpracticed writer Dr. 
Alexander's statements here criticised are reasonably consis- 
tent. He certainly was devoid of any consciousness of design 
in varying the form of his statement such as Mr. Salley, for 
instance, must have had when he confined himself to quoting 
half the sentence in Dr. Alexander's latest certificate and de- 
prived him of the benefit of this clause : "which papers have 
been in my possession ever since." This concluding clause 
of the certificate must have disclosed to Mr. Salley the weak- 
ness of his objection as it would have destroyed any apparent 
force in it, but the "love of truth because it is truth" did not ' 
prevail upon him to give Dr. Alexander the benefit of it. 

But this is only a part of Mr. Salley's indictment. Con- 
tinuing he says : 

"In the first paper which he gave to the world Dr. Alexander cave, 
fully avoided acknowledging that John McKnitt Alexander was his 
father; hid his identity under the signature 'J. McKnitt'; mentioned 
papers left in his hands by 'John McKnitt Alexander dee'd' althougli 
he produced only one paper and did not say how many m-n' there 
were or what their import was; and did not say that John McKnitt 
Alexander was the author of the paper or tell how the latter came 
into possession of it, or in what shape it was. He was evidently Iciving 
loop holes to escape in the event that he was 'cornered.' He stated that 
he had found it 'on file that the original book was burned in April, 
1800.' That a copy of the proceedings was sent to Hugh Williamson 
in New York, then writing a history of North Carolina, and that a 
copy was sent to Gen. W. R. Davie." 

Let US examine the grounds in detail on which Mr. Salley 
charges Dr. Alexander with forgery. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 115 

"In the first paper which he gave to the world Dr. Alexan-lt-r carefully 
avoided acknowledging that John McKnitt Alexander was iiis fathiri 
hul his identity under the signature 'J. McKnitt.' " 

Dr. Alexander did not personally "give to the world" his 
"first paper" on the subject of the Declaration. He wrote 
it to Congressman Davidson and Col. William Polk copied 
his letter to Davidson, made some emendations and had it 
published in the Raleigh Register. 

Congressman Davidson of the Mecklenburg District had 
applied to Dr. Alexander for information about the Declara- 
tion. Dr. Alexander wrote him an account of the ;.vent, 
which he said he had copied from papers "left in my hands 
by John McKnitt Alexander, dec'd." Of such papers as he 
did not copy he gave a brief stating their contents. He signed 
his letter in his customary way. He called himself Joe Mc- 
Knitt to distinguish him from the many other Alexanders in 
the county. Mr. Hoyt himself testifies to having seen several 
of his letters signed "J. McKnitt." He did not tell Con- 
gressman Davidson in his letter that he was the son of John 
McKnitt Alexander. The Congressman, to whom he and his 
family were personally known, would have deemed him sud- 
denly crazy if he had offered him such information. He did 
not tell Congressman Davidson that John McKnitt Alexander 
was the author of the paper and other particulars exacted by 
Mr. Salley, because, perhaps, he thought all this was suffi- 
ciently covered by the simple statement that it was "a true 
copy of the papers on" the subject of the Declaration "left 
in my hands by John McKnitt Alexander." 

"He was evidently leaving loop holes to escape in the event 
that he was 'cornered,' comments Mr. Salley on these simple 
circumstances. 

And what were the "loop holes" that he left ? 

He stated "that a copy of the proceedings was sent to 
Hugh Williamson in New York, then writing a history of 



116 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

North Carolina, and that a copy was sent to Gen. W. R. 
Davie," says Mr. Salley. 

Here then is the situation presented : 

Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander, in the act of forging a pa- 
per which he claimed was a true copy of John McKnitt Alex- 
ander's account of the Mecklenburg proceedings, gives notice 
that one copy of this account by his father had previously 
been sent to the historian Williamson and that another copy 
had been sent to Gen. Davie. 

The "loop holes" Dr. Alexander left then were these : 

By the production of the copy sent to Williamson or the 
copy sent to Gen. Davie his forgery would infallibly stand ex- 
posed. 

In 1820, a year later, the Davie copy in John McKnitt Al- 
exander's handwriting was found by Dr. Henderson as certi- 
fied by him and on comparison with the paper from which 
Dr. Alexander copied was found to be the same by Governor 
Stokes, Hon. D. L. Swain, the legislative committee and 
others, and even acknowledged by Prof. Phillips to have been 
the same. 

But Mr. Salley's irrepressible suspicions are excited even 
by Dr. Alexander's invitation to any one to make this com- 
parison ; also his ready habit of garbling quotations to suit his 
argument is exercised. Mr. Salley says : "Again the word- 
ing of this last certificate arouses suspicion: 'As to the full 
sheet being in an unknown liandwrite, it matters not who 
may thus have copied the original record.' " He cuts Dr. Al- 
exander's sentence in half and curtails it of its explanatory 
clause in identically the same way he treated the former sen- 
tence he quoted from the certificate. The full sentence is : 

"As to the full sheet being in an unknown handwrite, it matters not 
v^lio may have thus copied the original record: by compnrtn'i the copy 
deposited with Gen'l. Davie the two will he found perfectly the same, 
no far as his is preserved, that no imposition is possible — th-: one from 
the same original as the other is conclusive." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 117 

On grounds such as these and the inference he draws from 
them Mr. Salley charges Dr. Alexander in abusive and unre- 
served hmguage with forgery, and then says in conchision "a 
charge of forgery against Dr. Alexander could not be directly 
proven, but we submit that circumstantial evidence against 
him is very strong; strong enough to convict any man of 
fewer champions." 

In other words Mr. Salley deliberately libels the reputation 
of Dr. Alexander dead knowing that if Alexander were living 
and held him responsible he could not go into the court-house 
and prove his charges with the evidence. 

The identity of the Davie copy and the copy in the un- 
known handwriting corrected and filed away by John Mc- 
Knitt Alexander from which Dr. Alexander copied is estab- 
lished and Mr. Salley's rec^-ctess denunciations of Dr. Alex- 
ander as the fabricator of ths May 20 Declaration will only 
redound on his head. Dr. Alexander clearly did not have 
the ability to produce the re.-'olutions of May 20. But that 
aside the fact that they were copied and transmitted to pos- 
terity by John McKnitt Alexander does not rest upon Dr. 
Alexander's testimony. When Mr. Salley says he forged 
them he gives the lie, for one, to Governor D. L, Swain. 
Governor Swain was the trusted correspondent of Bancroft, 
Lossing, Randall and other historians and stands in honorable 
reputation the peer of any of tbem. In his "History of Meck- 
lenburg" Tompkins says "Governor Swain probably devoted 
more time to the study of the Mecklenburg Declaration of 
Independence and the involv.d questions than did any other 
man. He examined carefully all available testimony in a 
spirit in which even his unswerving patriotism and love for 
his native State could not influence him in his search for 
truth." It is but truth to say that Governor Swain accepted 
nothing on faith in his long and studious investigation of this 
subject. From time to time his opinions underwent change 



118 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

and modification, but he never knowingly misstated a fact or 
compromised with the truth in regard to it, erring rather 
in leaning against the Declaration when the conclusions could 
not be established on positive and demonstrable evidence. 
The enemies of the Declaration never fail to use Governor 
Swain when they can do so in any measure against it. They 
must not ignore his testimony — record evidence — when it 
blocks the way to the conclusion they wish to draw. Governor 
Swain loiew John McKnitt Alexander's handwriting. 
Governor Swain had possession for many years of the Alex- 
ander papers, the paper in the unknown handwriting, the 
Davie paper and the others. Governor Swain repeatedly 
testified in the most positive and measured words to the 
genuineness of the Davie paper. In 1830-31 he compared it 
with the paper in the nnknov;n hand and with Dr. Joseph 
McKnitt Alexander's account as published, and vouched for 
its genuineness. The legislative committee at this time put 
it on record of the Davie copy that "this paper is somewhat 
torn, but is entirely legible." Governor Swain wrote to Loss- 
ing in 1851 that ''the Davie paper was shown to be in the 
handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander." In 1858 he wrote 
in answer to Henry S. Randall, Jefferson's biographer, as 
already quoted: "You remark that the main question, so far 
as Mr. Jefferson is concerned is this: "Is the Alexander 
copy of the Mecklenburg Resolutions genuine ? The paper 
is unquestionably genuine. I have it before me, in the well- 
known handwriting of John McKnitt Alexander." This is 
Governor Swain's testimony delivered on three occasions, 
covering a period of twenty-eight years. In the meantime 
he had been put on notice as fully as could be, and had all 
this time to reconsider his first statement and revise it if 
erroneous. So far from doing so he twice reiterated it in 
this positive manner. Mr. Salley's scientific deductions which 
ignore facts will not suffice to overthrow this and other posi- 
tive evidence on this point. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 119 

Mr. Hoyt has reconstructed from the account of the Meck- 
lenburg proceedings in The Raleigh Register and the notes 
. of Bancroft's copyist the copy of the manuscript in an un- 
known handwriting as he believes it should appear, and in 
every slip of the pen, scratch and error of the unknown co]xv- 
ist he finds food for suspici'<:i. Doubtless Mr. Hoyt never 
makes errors in copying, never has mental lapses, never mis- 
takes or misplaces a word, Jicver duplicates, never goes to<» 
fast and has to scratch out and go back and substitute, and 
such like. If he is so happily constituted he cannot easily ap- 
preciate the troubles of penmen who are not so systematic anrl 
disciplined. The unknown who copied John McKnitt Alex- 
ander's account never dreamed how much would depend <ni 
a clean copy, and he certainly v/as not executing a forgery, 
as in either case he must have been more careful with his 
work. 

The same method Mr. Hoyt applies to the Mecklenburii 
papers to throw suspicion on thi m would easily demonstrate 
that Thomas Jefferson never wrote the National Declaration 
of Independence. An inspection of the fac-simile of Jeffer- 
son's autograph draft of the Declaration will show five times 
the erasures, the interlineations, the substitutions, elimina- 
tions, and other alterations to the square inch as are dis- 
played in the manuscript of the unknown (not to speak of <1i- 
versities of handwriting, which is not a feature of the last men- 
tioned paper.) And the principal of the phrases which Mi'. 
8alley says were '^stolen" from Jefferson were not in liis 
paper at all until the ''broadside" came back from the printer's 
hands. 

Mr. Hoyt places the May ?>\M Resolves and John McKnin 
Alexander's rough notes side by side in parallel columns to 
show that Alexander was trying to recall the May 31st paper. 
The result is only to demonstrate how utterly different and 
far apart were the preamble an 1 resolutions constituting the 
May 31st memorial to Congress and Alexander's recollection 



120 d:efence of the mecklenbukg 

of the resolutions declaring the county's independence. The 
two sets of Resolutions duplicate each other only in the pro- 
vision made for constitutinj the authorities of governnient 
under the new conditions and the adoption of a system of gov- 
ernment by the code of laws jncorporated in the May 31st 
Resolves carrying out in detail the briefer action of the Decla- 
ration in "adopting our forme-.' wholesome laws." Attempts 
to reconcile Alexander's notes and recollections with the May 
31st Resolves by any other explanation than that these latter 
were the legislative and administrative work of the "'Com- 
mittee of Safety" that was 'constituted" as Alexand / says, 
by "a selection from the menibers present" at the .\iav 20 
convention, are labored and fuiile. 

The May 31st Resolves were published in no less than five 
journals in 1775 and in no two tf them did they appear ver- 
batim et literatim the sam?, rnd yet the enemies of the 
Declaration never suggest a doubt of their authenticity on 
that score. 

TIk Massachusetts 8py or American Oracle of Liherty on 
July 12, 1775, published the preamble and first four reso- 
lutions of the May 31st Resolutions detached from tlie rest, 
which, in themselves alone, constitute an absolute decln ration 
of independence, and yet the enemies of the Declaration con- 
tend that Mecklenburg did not declare independence because 
their action was not proclaimed and made much of throughout 
the country. Mr. Hoyt himself admits that without tlie 18th 
resolution the May 31st Resolves would be an absolute declara- 
tion. This declaration was printed in John Adams' home 
town, under his very nose, and yet he declared afterwards," 
when won over by Jefferson's indignant but fallacious protests, 
that he never heard of the Merklenburg Declaration at the 
time. Doubtless he told the truth. He was too absorbed 
in his endeavors at that moment to persuade George TTJ that 
the Americans did not drea^l of independence to b(^rd the 
first clarion note of it from Mecklenburg County in .Vorth 
Carolina. 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 121 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE RECORD EVIDENCES. 



We come now in our study of the Mecklenburg Declaration 
of Independence to the record evidences of it. These are of 
two classes : direct and indirect. We will state them in the 
order of time. 

John McKnitt Alexander, the secretary of the convention 
and custodian of the records, left at least two copies of the 
Declaration, the copy in the unknown hand corrected by him- 
self, and the copy he deposited with Gen. Davie. He sent a 
third copy to Hugh Williamson, who was writing a history of 
North Carolina, but Williamson's history, as such, closes with 
the events of 1774. He said in his preface that he proposed 
to bring his work down to the year 1790 and had collected ma- 
terials for the purpose, but for reasons which he mentions, he 
desisted. Mr. Hoyt contends that Williamson ought to have 
said something about so remarkable a paper as the Mecklen- 
burg Declaration anyway and infers Williamson did not be- 
cause it was the -May 31st Resolves that Alexander sent him. 
But the May 31st paper was a more remarkable paper than 
the May 20 paper, according to Mr. Hoyt, and the writer 
thinks so, too. Why should Williamson not have gone out of 
his way to mention it, if he was to do so in favor of the Dec- 
laration ? Why did he not go out of his way to mention so 
important a step as North Carolina's instructions to her dele- 
gation in the Continental Congress on April 12, 1776, first 
among the colonies, to vote for independence ? 

Governor Stokes testified to having seen the Williamson 
copy of the Declaration in the hands of Williamson in 1793. 
But Mr. Hoyt has a pat method of dismissing all positive evi- 



122 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

dence with regard to the Declaration with the simple theory 
that the deponents were under misapprehension as to what 
they saw and understood. They '^transfigaired" the May 31st 
Resolves into the May 20 Declaration explains everything to 
his satisfaction. 

Ft is customary for the enemies of the Declaration to read 
dohn McKnitt x\lexauder's '^memory" certificate attached to 
the Davie copy of the historical statement and resolutions as 
apj)]ying expressly to the resolutions of the Declaration, but 
the certificate says : '^It may be worthy of notice here to ob- 
sei've that the foregoing statement, though fundamentally 
correct, yet may not literally correspond with the original 
I'ecords of the transactions of said delegation and court of en- 
quiry." We know in the light of history that while his state- 
ment contains some minor mistakes it is ''fundamentally cor- 
rect," and it is impossible to conceive of a man so careful and 
scrupulous as this certificate proves him to have been intro- 
ducing in his statement resolutions purporting to be the copy 
of a Declaration of Independence which he knew theip not to 
he. That would have been a "fundamental error" and the 
certificate does not cover any of that sort. 

Next there is the May 31st Resolves whijch are in them- 
selves collateral evidence that prior to the 31st of May, 1775, 
a convention had been held in Mecklenburg County which had 
created and constituted a Committee of Safety and invested it 
with the revolutionary powers necessary to annul "all commis- 
sions heretofore granted by the Crown" and to impose a new 
digest of laws and system of government upon the county. 
The contention that the committee arrogated and exercised 
these powers without authority from the people in the form of 
a popular declaration of independence refutes itself. 

Next in order is the "Instructions" to Mecklenburg repre- 
sentatives to the Provincial Congress, September 1, 1776, 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 123 

written by Dr. Epbraim Brevard. In addition to the similar- 
ity of the earmarks already noted between this paper and the 
May 20 Declaration, the "Instructions" throw a strong side- 
light npon the manner of people politically we are here deal- 
ing with. The ''Instructions' ' written a year and about three 
months after the Declaration was made "insists" upon the 
county being "acknowledged to be a distinct county of this 
State," with the privilege of electing its owu officers "by the 
freemen of the same." Is it likely that people who in 1776 so 
emphasized their local autonomy w^ould have met in 1775 to 
take action on the situation and have declared independence 
— not for their county, but for the American colonies ? 

The "Instructions" consist of seventeen sections, the hist of 
whicli reads : 

"17. Gentlemen, the foreging instructions you are not only to look 
on as instructions, but as charges, to which you are desired to takv 
special heed as the general rule of your conduct as our Representatives, 
and we expect you will exert yourselves to the utmost of your ability, 
to obtain the purposes given you in charge, and wherein you fail either 
in obtaining or opposing, you are hereby ordered to enter your protest 
against the vote of the Congress or Convention as is pointed out to you 
in the above instructions." 

Is it likely that people who i -.posed or proposed such strin- 
gent instructions to their repres(>ntatives in "Congress or Con- 
vention" in 1776 should in 1775 have tolerated the assumption 
of a committee to change theic form of government and d< - 
pose the king and other regulaLdy constituted authorities with- 
out express authority from tl'em ? Again the proposition 
refutes itself. 

Next in the order of time is "The Mecklenburg Censoi-." 
The writer wishes it to be understood that he uses the "poem" 
here as belonging to the indiiect class of record evidences. 
Attention was first called to the "Censor's" verses bv Governor 



124 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Swain who had a copy of thrm in 1858. Governor Swain 
called them "a. series of doggerel verses." He probably un- 
der-estimated their literary quality because they lampooned 
severely and doubtless unju-,tly some of the Mecklenburg 
leaders who were prominent in affairs, not only in the county 
in 1775, but in the State after vards. The "poem" is in fact 
a very clever political satire by a "disgruntled" resident and 
possibly politician of Meckkj.burg. It is modeled after 
Hudibras and deals with the political conduct of the people 
of the county as exhibited in their election in 1776, and in 
their attitude toward their representatives. Governor Swain 
said of his copy of the "poem," it "bears date 18th March, 
1777, extends thro' 260 lines, iuA is of unquestionable authen- 
ticity." The opening fourteen lines he quoted as follows: 

"the MECKLENBURG CENSOR ^ 

When Mecklenburg's fantastic rabble 
Renowned for censure, scold and gabble 
In Charlotte met m giddy council 
To lay the Constitution's groundsill 
By choosing men both learned and wise 
Who clearly could v ith half -shut eyes 
See millstones through or spy a plot 
Whether existed euch or not 
Who always could a:, noon define 
Whether the sun o.' moon did shine 
And by philosophy tell whether 
It was dark or t .mny weather 
And sometimes when their wits were nice 
Could well distingpish men from mice 
First to withdraw from British trust 
In Congress they the very first 
Their independence they declared." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 125 

The last three lines make direct reference to the Declara- 
tion, but the charge has been made that they were inter- 
polated in Governor Swain's copy and it is not the purpose 
of the writer, as stated at the outset, to take issue with the 
enemies of the Declaration on any disputed fact of the con- 
troversy. The purpose is to meet them on their own ground 
and show the perverse error of their deductions. 

Another copy of "The Mecklcnhurg Censor" is on file in 

the Charleston, S. C, Library. It is in manuscript under 

this caption: 

"A Modern Poem 

by 

The Mecklenburg Censor, 
Published A. D. 1777." 

The poem is introduced by "The Editor" with an explana- 
tory comment dated "March 80, 1777," and it is followed 
up with "Characters and notes of information," furnishing 
a key to the personal allusions in the poem. The whole 
is written in a fair legible han.l and the manuscript is con- 
tained in a "scrap book" of rare old manuscripts preserved by 
this library, which was founded in 1748. Both the author 
of the "poem" and "the editov" were residents of Mecklen- 
burg although neither of their names is preserved. Mr. A. 
S. Salley, Jr., published the "poem" with its prose setting 
in the Charleston Sunday Nev:s, April 22, 1906, 

The "poem" as here copied and commented on, varies in 
some few of its words from Governor Swain's quoted frag- 
ment, and it does not contain tlie three disputed lines. Also 
it is evident that Governor Swain's copy did not have the 
advantage of "The Editor's" comment which, to the writer's 
mind, has an important bearing on the controversy as showing 
that it was the fixed custom of the people as early as 1776 
to conduct their public affairs in popular mass meetings and 
net only to tell their delegates and representatives what they 



126 DEFENCE OE THE MECKLENBURG 

wanted, but to hold them to strict aecoimtability for the execu- 
tion of their wishes. ''The Editor's" introduction to the 
''poem" is in part, as follows : 

"To the Electors of Mecklenburg — 

"Gentlemen: The following poem came some time ago, by accident ii.to 
my hands, in which I find some things that will probably offend many 
of my good friends in this county. Yet I am of opinion that it con- 
tains many useful hints which ought not to be concealed ii'.iv.'. the 
public at this critical juncture. I have therefore thouoht if my duty, 
as an impartial but sincere friend to the inhabitants of the county, to 
give you an opportunity of perusing it. 

"The Censor ridicules the confused and unthinking conduct of the 
freemen of Mecklenburg, at the election held last November, wilh a 
severity that I thought unjustifiable until I saw that the same spirit 
of insipid indifference prevailed at our own last election, held the 10th 
day of March. 

"He also disapproves of the men you have chosen; and indeed I 
have great reason to believe from your conduct and public sentiuient 
that you yourselves disapprove of your choice. For what other reason 
has induced you to hold elections for field officers of the militia and 
justices of the peace — a power by our Congress very judiciously vested 
m the General Assembly? And why the very particular instructions 
you have given your Representatives? If you were convinced that you 
had chosen honest men, you would surely trust something to their man- 
agement. But instead of this, you are so dubious of their integiity 
that you do everything yourselves, and send them only as messengers 
to inform the assembly what your will and pleasure is. Strictly by 
your orders our Representatives must abide or do nothing. Quere? 
Would not those instructions in writing, signed by a number of leading 
men hi the county, and sent to the assembly by a trusty negroe, aTi.sv'er 
the same end?'" 

Parenthetically the writer suspects tliat "the Editor" and 
the author of "the Mecklenburg Censor" were one and the 
same person, as the prose of the one and the poetry of the 
other bear similar ear marks, notably the odd use of the 
word "Quere" quoted in the last sentence above. The word 
occurs also in the poetry and is so odd as to be marked. It 
is perhaps proper to say that this word does not occur in 
the production as published by Mr. Salley in the Charleston 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 127 

Sunday News. This last sentence as published by him 
reads : "More would not those instructions in writing, signed 
by a number of leading men in the county and put to the 
Assembly by a thrifty negro answer the same end." Here 
are three inaccuracies in one sentence occurring between Mr. 
Salley's copy and tlie printed article, committed without de- 
sign, of course, but going to show the peril of convicting 
persons out of hand of forgery for typographical or verbal 
discrepancies appearing in printed matter. 

But the important bearing of "the Mecklenburg Censor" 
and "the Editor's" commentaries, heretofore overlooked, is 
the facts here recorded that as early as 1776 the Mecklen- 
burgers were "renowned for censure, scold and squabble," as 
the Charleston copy of the "poem" has it; that, so far from 
being "confused and unthinking," they mapped owt the 
course their representatives were to pursue and gave them 
such strict instructions — "orders" the "Editor" says — as left 
them nothing to do but "to inform the assembly what your 
%vill and pleasure is." It is clear that "the Editor" here 
refers to the "Instructions" as first given shape in Dr. 
Brevard's paper, already referred to, and as repeated and im- 
proved on in the instructions agreed to "At a general Con- 
ference of the inhabitants of Mecklenburg at the court-house 
on the first of November, 1776, for the express purpose of 
drawing up instructions for the present Representatives in 
Congress." Is it among the probabilities that people who 
in 1776 "ordered" (in the language of Brevard's instructions, 
con-oborated by the testimony of "the Editor") their Repre- 
sentatives to execute their "charges" "strictly" would in 1775 
have permitted a handful of men to declare a revolution and 
overthrow the duly constituted authorities of government 
from the King to the magistrates and constables of the county 
without authority to do so being previously vested in them by 
the people ? The fallacy of the proposition is self-evident. 



128 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Mr. Hoyt ignores the indirect bearing of "The Mecklen- 
burg Censor" and disposes of the direct reference to the 
Declaration in Governor Swain's copy (conceding it to have 
been there legitimately) by his favorite assumption when con- 
fronted by positive evidence that when the "Censor" said 
the Mecklenburgers "their independence they dclared" he 
had reference to the adoption of a paper which he (Hoyt) 
says is not a declaration of independence. 

Mr. Hoyt offers "The Mecklenburg Censor" in evidence 
to demonstrate the "origin" and "genesis of the myth,'* as 
he calls the Declaration, in the public mind, and then pro- 
ceeds to show that "The Censor" was unknown to the public 
until Governor Swain called attention to it in 1858, and he, 
in addition, produces evidence which "seems conclusive" to 
him that "the three lines which refer to the Declaration 
of Independence, did not belong to the original poem," but 
were interpolated "by a man of Swain's time." How a 
"myth" which was so able-bodied in 1830 as to be established 
by legislative inquiry for historical facts could have originated 
in the public mind from a poem the public never heard of 
until 1858 is one of the mysteries of the improved "scientific 
methods" with which the lay mind is not qualified to grapple. 

The most remarkable record evidence of the Declaration 
of the direct class is the Moravian record made in 1783 and 
discovered in 1904 among the archives of the Moravian 
Church at Bethania, 'N. C, by Mr. O. J. Lehman, of that 
place. This is a historical sketch of the events of the Revolu- 
tionary War covering the period from 17Y5 to 1779. The 
title, translated into English, is "Fragment, Record of the 
events during the Revolutionary War which had a reference 
to Wachovia to the end of 1779." The record for the year 
1775 closes with this paragraph : 

"Ich kan zu Ende des mSsten Jahres nicht unongemerkt lassen, 
dass schon im Sommer selbigen Jahres, das ist im May, Juny, oder 
July, die County Mecklenburg in Nord Carolina sich fur so frey u inde- 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 129 

pendent von England declarite, u solche Einrichtung zur Verwaltung 
der Gesetze unter sich machte, als jamalen der Continental Cr^ngtefiS 
hernach ins Ganze gethan. Dieser Congress aber sahe dieses Vt-rfahien 
als zu fruhzeitig an." 

The words in italics are written in English script, the 
other in German. Translated into English, the paragraph 
reads : 

"I can not leave unmentioned at the end of the 175th year, that 
already in the summer of this year, that is in May, June or July, the 
County of Mecklenburg in Tslorth Carolina declared itself free and inde- 
pendent of England, and made such arrangements for the administrntion 
of the laws among themselves, as later the Continental Congress made 
for all. This Congress, however, considered these proceedings prema- 
ture." 

In an exceedingly interesting and scientific pamphlet en- 
titled "The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence as men- 
tioned in Eecords of Wachovia," 1907, reprinted from The 
Wachovia Moravian of April, 1906, Miss Adelaide L. Fries 
has "established," as Mr. Hoyt admits, that this record 
was made by Trangott Bagge in 1Y83. Traugott Bagge, ac- 
cording to Miss Fries, "was the most able man of affairs in 
Wachovia during the War," and "as merchant, financier, 
politician, as a sturdy, conscientious man, Traugott Bagge 
ranks among the first in the history of the State." The 
Moravians, it appears, were neutral during the Kevolutionary 
War, but among the archives of their church at Bethania 
they had carefully kept records wi'itten "by the most learned 
men of their Brotherhood" covering the period from 1755 
to the present day." 

At the close of the eight years' war the Moravian Brother- 
hood proceeded according to their custom to make and file an 
historical record of it among the "beilage" kept with their 
church diary. As the active head of affairs in Wachovia 
during those years and most intimate with current events 
Traugott Bagge's services were employed in making a record 
of the events from 1775 to 1779. "This guarantees the ac- 

9 



130 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

curacy of statements in the 'Fragment,' " says Miss Fries. 
" *The Fragment,' " she says, ''is neither a diary nor a me- 
chanical compilation from a diary. It is an historical sketch, 
well written, clear-cut, showing keen insight into the affairs 
of the State and J^ation, as well as the most intimate ac- 
quaintance with events in Wachovia." 

Here then is a contemporaneous record, made by an un- 
biased but fully informed accurate historian, with no pur- 
pose but to record the truth, which briefly but completely 
covers every essential of the statement made by John Me- 
Knitt Alexander seventeen years later, that the "County of 
Mecklenburg declared itself free and independent of England 
and made such arrangements for the administration of the 
laws among themselves, as later the Continental Congress 
made for all. This Congress, however, considered these pro- 
ceedings premature." 

"We (the County,)" said Alexander, "declared ourselves 
a free and independent people." But "we were premature." 
Thus in 1800 he used the very word most aptly expressing 
the answer brought back by Captain Jack from Congress and 
in 1904 this unthought-of record, buried for 121 years, was 
brought to light with the identical word recording the same 
fact. And, yet, the enemies of the Declaration insist that 
Alexander did not know or remember the difference be- 
tween a paper which declared the county independent and 
one which argued that the colonies, by reason of the alleged 
abdication of the King, were virtually independent. 

Traugott Bagge not only testifies to the county's declara- 
tion of independence, but he accounts for the May 31st Re- 
solves in the statement that the people "made such arrange- 
ments for the administration of the laws among themselves 
as later the Continental Congress made for all." The May 
31st paper answers this description precisely, but it will be 
observed that this is stated as proceedings additional but 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 131 

separate and subsequent to the Declaration of Independenca 
Yet Mr. Hoyt stubbornly and weakly contends that "if it be 
admitted that a belief gained currency in Mecklenburg 
County and the vicinity as early as 1783 that the May 31st 
Resolves were a declaration of independence his (Traugott 
Bagge's) recollections must be understood as relating to 
them." But who admits such a proposition ? Certainly not 
the advocates of the Mecklenburg Declaration. The enemies 
of the Declaration surely will not undertake to make the 
admission for them. The truth is that Mr. Hoyt treats of 
the Mecklenburgers and their neighbors in North Carolina of 
the Revolutionary period on the theory propounded by the 
grave digger in Hamlet that the men in England would not 
know the Prince was mad because they were all as mad as 
he. But the unbiased student who examines closely into 
their public papers and proceedings must conclude that if the 
Mecklenburgers and the Moravians were mad they were "but 
mad north-northwest" and "when the wind" was "southerly" 
they "knew a hawk from a handsaw." 

John W. Jordan, librarian of the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania, writing to Miss Fries, expresses his gratifica- 
tion "that through your researches among the Archives of 
Wachovia you have found records which substantiate the 
claims made for this important event. I am thoroughly fa- 
miliar with the records, particularly of the Colonial and 
Revolutionary periods of the Moravians in America, and 
esteem them, local and general, of the highest historical 
value." 

John H. Clewell, archivist of Wachovia, writes : "The dis- 
covery of the 'Bagge Manuscript' effectually sets at rest the 
question of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence 
except perhaps in the minds of those who are unwilling to 
consider the matter in a fair and unbiased light. The Wacho- 
via Archives are a series of records made contemporaneous 



132 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

with the events themselves, and form an unbroken history of 
the leading events of our section, and of the principal events 
of the State, and even of the country at large, from 1753 
to the present day. In no case has the reliability of these 
archives ever been brought into question." 

The next record evidence of the Declaration appeared in 
the Raleigh Register, July 28, 1808. It was the report of 
a "banquet held in Charlotte on the night of the 4th of July, 
1808." One of the toasts is given as follows: 

"By Joseph Pearson — The Patriots of Mecklenburg, the first to declare 
independence. May their sons be the last to acknowledge themselves 
slaves." 

This unqualified statement of the Mecklenburg Declaration 
made at a public banquet and published in the public prints 
in 1808, when many of the Revolutionary generation were 
still living and the people were familiar with the facts, passed 
without challenge or comment. 

Mr. Hoyt does not refer to this incident. 

Mr. Salley includes the toast in his review of the con- 
troversy in the American Historical Review, but he does so 
without comment. There was nothing to say. 

On June 1, 1809, at Sugar Creek Academy, Mecklenburg 

County, one of the scholars, believed to have been James 

Wallis, delivered the valedictory in which he said : 

On the 19th of May, 1775, a day sacredly exulting to every Mecklen- 
burg bosom, two delegates duly authorized from every militia company 
in this county met in Charlotte — After a cool and deliberate investi- 
gation of the causes and extent of our differences with G. Britain and 
taking a view of the probable result; pledging their all in support of 
their rights and liberties ; they solemnly entered into and published 
a full and determined declaration of independence, renouncing forever 
all allegiance, dependence on or connection with Great Britain ; dissolved 
all judicial and military establishments emanating from the British 
crown ; established others on principles correspondent with their declara- 
tion, which went into immediate operation: All of which were trans- 
mitted to Congress by express, and probably expedited the general 
declaration of Independence. May we ever act worthy of such prede- 
cessors. 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 133 

The address was published in The Minerva, Raleigh, N. 
C, August 10, 1809, and there was no denial entered or 
challenge made of the truth of the facts as stated by any 
one of the thousands then living -who must have known it if 
the statement was false. It was not until the question became 
one of jealous rivalry in 1819, when most of the actors had 
passed away, that the publication of the history of the event, 
including a copy of the Declaration, excited the ire of Mr. 
Jefferson and his friends, and provoked the great man into 
his intemperate and unjust strictures on the Mccklcnburgers. 
So long as the popular interest in the subject of the first 
move made for independence was in abeyance the Mecklen- 
burgers' claims were neglected. When it became a matter of 
public interest they were disputed and that they have been 
disputed ever since in the face of the most remarkable finds 
of contemporaneous and positive testimony, it is only neces- 
sary to point to Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Salley to demonstrate. 

However, there were enough eye witnesses of the event 
still living in 1819 when the controversy arose, and in 1830, 
when it was revived, to establish the fact of the convention 
and of its action declaring independence, and the General 
Assembly, after a full investigation, put it on public record 
"that there is no one event of the Revolution which has been, 
or can be more fully or clearly authenticated." 

The writer has not included Governor Josiah Martin's 
several denunciations made at different times, of the treason- 
able conduct of the Mecklenburgers among the record evi- 
dences bearing on the Declaration because, from all the evi- 
dence now extant and available, he is bound to the conclusion 
that Governor Martin referred to the May 31st Resolves in 
his dispatches to the Earl of Dartmouth. The abstraction by 
or for friends of Mr. Jefferson of the copy of the newspaper 
containing the resolutions first sent to Dartmouth by Governor 
Martin would, under the rules of evidence, place the burden 



134 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

on the enemies of the Declaration to produce this paper,* 
but we will let that pass, as it is not desirable to take ad- 
vantage of a technical point in getting at the truth of the 
Declaration. The writer thinks it possible Governor Martin 
did not see a printed copy of the May 20 Declaration prior 
to the dispatches. That he had full oral reports eventually 
and fully learned the tenor and appreciated the extent to 
which the Mecklenburgers had gone in their revolutionary 
proceedings, however, he leaves us no room to doubt. 

When the revolution came to a head in Mecklenburg Gov- 
ernor Martin was a refugee from his seat of government. 
Dr. Foote and other historians of the period say that he fled 
from Newbern on the 24th of April, 1775, after a body of 
Whigs attacked his palace and carried off his guns. Mr. 
Hoyt says Governor Martin fled from JSTewbern "during the 
last week of May, 1775." This is evidently an error. At all 
events Governor Martin was cut off from the regular avenues 
of communication with his people for nearly a month before 
the Mecklenburg convention was held. In his letter July 6, 
1775, to the Earl of Dartmouth, "he said that a servant 
whom ho had dispatched to the postoflice at Wilmington for 
his letters three days before was stopped by a committee of 
the town of Brunswick and obliged to swear that he had no 
letter for him before he was allowed to proceed." Mr. Hoyt 
says that on June 16, "Governor Martin was almost entirely 
cut off from communication with Newbern," and if with 
l^ewbern still more so, necessarily, with Mecklenburg. It is 
evident that under such circumstances he would be at a dis- 
advantage in obtaining full and connected reports of public 
proceedings. The news would reach him slowly and irregu- 
larly. He would at first be dependent upon such newspapers 
as might clandestinely reach him on the British sloop-of-war 

* Mr. Hoyt says: "It is clear that this newspaper contained the Mecklenburg resolves." 
is stranj^e the abstractors did not disclose the nature of the newspaper'.s contents, even 
hough it contained only the May 31st resolves, in Aiew of the controversy then rife. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 135 

Cniizer in Cape Fear River. The Mecklenburgers did not 
have any local press and none of their proceedings were 
printed at home. The county's Declaration of Independence 
necessarily impressed them most and was most studiously 
preserved by manuscript copies. The May 31st Resolutions 
were made expressly for foreign consumption. They dealt 
with the situation in the country at large and naturally were 
more prominently put forward by the newspapers along the 
route traveled by Captain Jack and elsewhere. They thus 
first came to the attention of Governor Martin. So we find 
him on June 25, 1775, in an address to the Council at F(^rt 
Johnson, denouncing "the late most treasonable publication of 
a Committee in the County of Mecklenburg explicitly re- 
nouncing obedience to his Majesty's Government and all law- 
ful authority whatsoever. * * * directly tending to the 
dissolution of the Constitution of this Province." And on 
June 30, five days later he wrote to Dartmouth : "The Re- 
solves of the Committee of Mecklenburg which your Lord- 
ship will find in the enclosed Newspaper, surpass all the 
horrid and treasonable publications that tlie inflammatory 
spirits of this Continent have yet produced." 

It seems possible to this writer that up to this date Gov- 
ernor Martin had seen only the resolutions of May 31. But 
the Governor was not entirely cut off from oral communica- 
tion with the people of the interior. Mr. Hoyt argues that 
he "had a large following in the province, particularly in 
the upper and middle Cape Fear regions, and it would have 
been physically impossible for the patriot party to prevent 
the news of a declaration of independence publicly proclaimed 
in Mecklenburg from reaching him. * * * Governor 
Martin's letters and public papers show that, notwithstanding 
attempts to prevent his adherents from communicating with 
him, he was well informed of movements in all parts of the 
province." This, we think, is obviously true. 



136 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Certain it is that Governor Martin heard news of an ex- 
citing character from Mecklenburg after his receipt and 
perusal of the May 31st Resolves. The enormities of the 
Mecklenburgers were of a continuing and increasing sort that 
grew on the royal Governor. At a meeting of the Council on 
the Cruizer July 18, he again referred to their "treasonable 
proceedings" and to the "unnatural Rebellion now foment- 
ing in Mecklenburg." But on August 8 the Governor issued 
a "fiery proclamation from the Cruizer," in which he said 
that he had "seen a most infamous publication in the Cape 
Fear Mercury importing to be resolves of a set of people 
stiling themselves a Committee of the County of Mecklenburg 
most traitorously declaring the entire dissolution of the Laws, 
Government and Constitution of this country and setting up 
a system of rule and regulation repugnant to the Laws and 
subversive of His Majesty's Government." 

"Governor Martin's language can be properly applied to 
nothing less than a declaration of independence" Mr. Hoyt 
admits, preliminary to his usual plea, when confronted with 
direct evidence, that Governor Martin did not perceive the 
difference between a paper which was a declaration of inde- 
pendence and one which Hoyt claims was not, and it was still 
the May 31st Resolves that was exciting him to this more vio- 
lent outbreak than any he had indulged in when the paper 
originally came to his hand, about two months before. In his 
description of the May 31st Resolves on the 25th of June Gov- 
ernor Martin termed them a "most treasonable publication 
* * * explicitly renouncing obedience to His Majesty's Gov- 
ernment * * * tending to the dissolution of the Constitu- 
tion." But in this latest fulmen brutum he denounces the 
resolutions seen in the Cape Fear Mercury as "declaring the 
entire dissolution" of the Government. It is difficult to 
avoid the conclusion that Governor Martin had seen the May 
20 Declaration in the copy of the Cape Fear Mercury to 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 137 

wliicli he refers. What the name of the newspaper was he 
sent to Dartmouth and which was taken out by Mr. Turner 
for Minister Stevenson and never replaced does not appear in 
his statements. But the resolutions he here denounces ap- 
peared in the Cape Fear Mercury of some date unmentioned 
and while no Cape Fear Mercury is extant containing the 
May 20 Declaration it is equally true that there is none ex- 
tant containing the May 31st Eesolves. It seems probable 
that the Declaration was published in the Cape Fear Mercury 
after Governor Martin had seen the May 31 Eesolves in the 
North Carolina Gazette of June 16, 1775, published at New- 
bern. If the May 31st Resolves had been printed in the 
Mercury, published at Wilmington, Governor Martin must 
have seen the paper before June 25, as he was anchored in the 
river near Wilmington and no doubt obtained copies of the 
Wilmington newspaper without delay. It is true that Gov- 
ernor Martin in his dispatch to Dartmouth, August 28, men- 
tions that a ''messenger" had reached him from a "body of 
Germans" in Mecklenburg bringing a "loyal declaration" 
against the resolves, a copy of which he had sent him, and no 
doubt the declaration of the "loyal" Germans was against the 
May 31st Resolves, the May 20 Declaration and all other of 
the revolutionary proceedings of the Mecklenburgers as well. 



138 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

CHAPTER X. 



TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 



We come finally, in our study of the Mecklenburg Decla- 
ration of Indej^endence, to the testimony of the witnesses. 
In 1819, when the controversy first arose, and in 1830, when 
it was revived, there was only one paper in dispute, the May 
20 Declaration. The May 31st Resolves, as printed, had 
not then been discovered. When this latter paper was 
brought to light it was pitted against the Declaration as a 
rival document, instead of being accepted as the mere sequence 
to the former paper, which it obviously was. The claim 
was made that the May 31st Resolves were the genuine and 
only resolutions adopted, and it was bolstered up with the ar- 
gument that many of the witnesses to the May, 1775, pro- 
ceedings in their testimony made references which were ap- 
plicable to the May 31st paper, and that General Joseph 
Graham, in particular, cited as one of the arguments for de- 
claring independence, the theory of the King's abdication, 
which was the basis for the memorial to Congress in the May 
31st preamble. This was the last resort of a defeated cause. 
If the witnesses had not specifically accounted for the May 
31st paper in testifying to the Declaration there would have 
been some excuse for the claim that they had confused the 
Declaration with it. How much stronger would the conten- 
tion of the enemies of the Declaration have been in that case ! 
But in absolute ignorance of the existence of printed or other 
copies of the May 31st Resolves, they stated accurately the 
nature of the paper and its true relations to the Declaration, 
and left nothing really but a simulated surprise for those 
taking refuge in the discovery of the paper made later. The 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 139 

aged witnesses, after the lapse of 44 and 55 years, respective- 
ly, would naturally run events together in recalling the de- 
tails, but it is remarkable how they remembered so intelli- 
gently and discriminatingly the salient features of the pro^ 
ceedings, to speak of the election of a committee of safety and 
of the code of civil laws which it enacted and administered. 

Fourteen reputable citizens certified to having been present 
at the convention that declared independence. 

General Joseph Graham's testimony has been chiefly relied 
on as the bulwark of the assailants. Mr. Hoyt says that Gen- 
eral Graham "described the great meeting" of May, 1775, 
^'with extraordinary particularity," and he takes great com- 
fort from the circumstance that General Graham related that 
one of the arguments made for declaring independence was 
that the King or Ministry had by proclamation or some 
edict, declared the Colonies out of the protection of the Brit- 
ish Crown," hence as allegiance and protection were recipro- 
cal obligations, the King had abdicated, and had himself re- 
leased the people from their allegiance. This argument, Gen- 
eral Graham proceeds to show, was made to overcome the scru- 
ples of one man *who raised the objection that the Declaration 
would be a violation of their oaths of allegiance taken some 
four years before. This is proof conclusive to Mr. Hoyt that 
the May 31st paper, the preamble of which was based upon the 
abdication theory, was the paper then adopted. But it was 
a mere incident in General Graham's narrative. He said 
that "on the 20th of May, 1775, besides the two persons elect- 
ed from each militia company * * * a much larger number 
of citizens attended * * * perhaps half the men in the 
county. The news of the battle of Lexington * * * had ar- 
rived. There appeared among the people much excitement." 
That "Abraham Alexander" was appointed "chairman" and 

*ProbaWv Jeremiah McCafferty, who, the "Mecklenburg Censor" says, was known as 
the "Charlotte trimmer." 



140 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

"John McKnitt Alexander, clerk or secretary. * * * After 
reading a number of papers * * * and much animated dis- 
cussion, the question was taken, and thej resolved to declare 
themselves independent. * * * Doctor Ephraim Brevard, a 
Mr. Kennon, an attorney, and a third person, vs^hom I do not 
recollect, were appointed to draft this Declaration." When 
the committee returned, "Doctor Ephraim Brevard read their 
report, as near as I can recollect, in the very words we have 
since seen them several times in print." (This was in 1830, 
after the May 20 Declaration was printed in the Raleigh 
Register and other papers.) Continuing, General Graham 
said: 'Tt was unanimously adopted * * * proclamation 
made and the people collected, that the proceedings be read 
at the court house door. It was done, and they were received 
with enthusiasm * * * cheers," were given, "hats thrown" 
and "several lit on the roof." 

"The foregoing is all from personal knowledge," said Gen- 
eral Graham. "I understood afterwards that Captain James 
Jack * * * undertook on the request of the committee, to 
carry a copy of their proceedings to Congress." 

Mr, Hoyt says, "The address of Parliament did not, as 
General Graham recollected, declare the Colonies out of the 
protection of the British Crown, but only that a part of your 
Majesty's subjects in the province of Massachusetts Bay have 
proceeded so far as to resist the authority of the supreme leg- 
islature, that a rebellion at this time actually exists within the 
said province." "It is evident," continues Mr. Hoyt, "that 
the Mecklenburg patriots had some strong motive which is not 
apparent on the face of their bold resolves [May 31st Be- 
solves] for giving them a color of legality by construing the 
sentence of rebellion passed on Massachusetts to fall also on 
themselves." 

Confiding, Ruleless Mr. Hoyt ! The motive of the Mecklen- 
burgers in the abdication argument at the May 20 convention 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 141 

was to carry convictiou to tender consciences and persuade 
them to vote for independence as it was in the May 31st pa- 
per to carry conviction to the Continental Congress and per- 
suade it to sanction their independent government. Eut it 
was the flimsiest sort of pretense, without substance to it ; cer- 
tainly not enough to stir the people of an entire county whom 
it did not touch into patriotic fever and precipitate them into 
revolution. Given the May convention and the olst Re- 
solves, based on an abdication which had no existence, as the 
result, and we have something on a par with the mountain 
laboring to brino; forth a mouse. 

The abdication argument as related by Gen. Graham oc- 
curred after the committee on resolutions had retired to draft 
the declaration and was triumphantly answered and dis- 
posed of before the committee returned. Hence it could have 
had no effect on the tenor of those resolutions but doubtless 
had much to do with shaping the May 31st memorial to 
Congress. 

The only other point of any apparent difficulty in the 
statements of the witnesses occurs in the testimony of John 
Simeson. Simeson gave an intelligent and interesting ac- 
count of the convention and declaration and said: "In ad- 
dition to what I have said, the same committee appointed 
three men to secure all the military stores for the county's 
use — Thomas Polk, John Phifer, and Joseph Kennedy. I 
was under arms near the head of the line, near Col. Polk, 
and heard him distinctly read a long string of Grievances, 
the Declaration and military order above. I likewise heard 
Col. Polk have two warm disputes with two men of the 
county, who said the measures were rash and unnecessary. 
He was applauded and they were silenced." No doubt the 
May 31st Pesolves, which included the military order so well 
remembered by Simeson, was read to the militia on parade 
after they were adopted, and while it is not at all clear that 



142 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Simeson meant to imply that this occurred at the May 20 
meeting, he may very easily, after forty-five years, have con- 
fused it with the May 20 proceedings. There is no other inti- 
mation in any of the testimony that the military were in line 
at the Mecklenburg mass meeting and if it was even a muster 
day the soldiers would not have been confined to ranks while a 
political discussion was proceeding. 

This point troubled the conscientious Swain, who, it ap- 
pears, fell into the error of viewing the May 31st Resolves 
as antagonistic instead of complementary to the May 20 Dec- 
laration. 

Simeson said another thing which is especially significant 
in connection with the distinction the May 31st Eesolves make 
between the convention of committeemen or acting magis- 
trates and the committee of safety. He said : "The Courts 
likewise acted independently. I myself heard a dispute take 
place on the bench, and an acting magistrate was actually 
taken and sent to prison by an order of the Chairman." 

For the rest, the testimony of the witnesses presents no 
discrepancies worth noting. Some of them did not remem- 
ber the date of the convention and half of them mentioned Dr. 
Brevard as the secretary of the meeting, while the others said 
John McKnitt Alexander was the secretary. It is probably 
just as well they did not agree too well in their recollections as 
the enemies of the Declaration would then have criticised their 
testimony as too consistent to be original. 

The Rev. Francis Cummins, of Lexington, Ga., writing to 
Senator Nathaniel Macon under date of Nov. 16, 1819, after 
leading up to the convention, said : "At length, in the same 
year, 1775, I think, at least positively before July 4, 1776, 
the males generally of that county, met on a certain day in 
Charlotte, and from the head of the court house stairs pro- 
claimed independence on English Government by their herald, 
Col. Thomas Polk. I was present, and saw and heard it, and 



DEGLAKATION OK INDEPENDENCE. 143 

as a young man, and then a student in Queen's Museum, was 
an agent in these things." 

The liev. Humphrey Huntei* iu his historical account of 
the framing and adoption of the May 20 Declaration, said: 
"Those resolves having been concurred in, bye laws and reg- 
ulations for the government of a Standing Committee of 
Public Safety were enacted and acknowledged." (Let it be 
remembered that he did not have any suggestion of the dis- 
pute over the May 31st Resolves — discovered later — lo 
prompt him to provide for the election of a "Standing Com- 
mittee of Public Safety.") "On that memorable day," Mr, 
Humphrey wrote, "I was 20 years and 14 days of age, a very 
deeply interested spectator, recollecting the dire hand of op^ 
pression that had driven me from my native clime, now pur- 
suing me in this happy asylum, and seeking to bind again in 
the fetters of bondage." 

George Graham, Wm. Hutchinson, Jonas Clark and Robt. 
Robinson joined in a common letter in which, after relating 
the details of the convention, they said "that a committee of 
Safety for the county were elected, who w^ere clothed with 
civil and military power * * * We do further certify, that 
the acts passed by the committee of Safety, were received as 
the Civil Law of the land, in many cases." Here is a direct 
reference to the civil code contained in the May 31st Re- 
solves, and it is the more valuable in that it was positive but 
unconscious testimony that this code was "passed by the com- 
mittee of Safety" elected by the May 20 convention. 

Major John Davidson, "the only person living who was a 
member of that [Mecklenburg, May 20] Convention," writ- 
ing in 1830, said: "John McKnitt Alexander and myseli 
were chosen from one company, * * * Wlien the members 
met, and were perfectly organized for business a motion was 
made to declare ourselves independent of the Crown of Great 
Britain, which was carried by a large majority. Dr. Ephraim 



144 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Brevard was then appointed to give us a sketch of the Decla- 
ration of Independence, which he did." 

Lyman Draper said : "When such a man as John David- 
son states positively that he was one of the members of the 
famous Mecklenburg convention of May, 1775, chosen in his 
captain's company, with John McKnitt Alexander as his 
coadjutor, no one has ever called his claim into question. It 
should stand as one of the fixed facts of history." 

Col. William Polk, a son of Col. Thomas Polk, who was 
present at the May 20 convention as a spectator, being too 
young to take an active part, recited the May 20 resolutions 
as those adopted and added: "In addition to the foregoing 
resolutions, a number of other resolutions and bye laws were 
adopted — Courts of Justice were held by and under the di- 
rection of the Delegates — * * * ^ Committee of Safety 
was selected from the whole Delegation to whom was given 
power to examine all persons brought before them who were 
charged or suspected of being inimical to the cause of free- 
dom and the safety of the country." This is precisely the 
scheme of government elaborately presented, as we have 
shown, in the May 31st Eesolves, the existence of which pa- 
per in print was not known when this was written, thus 
corroborating the truth of Col. Polk's testimony. 

Captain James Jack, living in Elbert County, Ga., certi- 
fied in the 88th year of his age, to the Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion of Independence and related the particulars of his trip 
with it to Philadelphia. In his distant home in 1819 and 
after the lapse of forty-four years, Captain Jack could not 
recall the date of the convention, but, without at that time 
havins; any possible motive for doing so, he significantly re- 
called the fact that sometime elapsed after the convention 
before he started on his trip. "I was then solicited " he 
says, "to be the bearer of the proceedings to Congress. I set 
out the following month, say June, and in passing through 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 145 

Salisbury, the General Court was sitting — " etc. It is 
known that Captain Jack did pass through Salisbury while 
the court was sitting, and that the court sat the first week 
in June of 1775, having convened on the first day of the 
month. If the meeting Captain Jack had in mind had been 
held May 31 he could not have acquired and retained the 
impression that an appreciable length of time had inter- 
vened such as is expressed in the words "the following 
month," and the length of time he had in mind could not 
have intervened and yet have permitted him to pass through 
Salisbury while the court was in session. The absolute dec- 
laration of independence could not have been foreseen and 
provided for in advance. The sending of a messenger to 
Philadelphia was clearly an afterthought. The committee 
of safety and correspondence had to meet and fix up the pa- 
pers for congress. In the meantime the messenger had to 
be agreed on and the money to pay the expenses of the trip 
had to be collected from various sources, since, as the four 
aged witnesses in their joint letter certify, Captain Jack's 
expenses were paid "by a voluntary subscription." All this 
occurred between May 20 and the sitting of the court which 
met June 1 and adjourned June 6. It could not have oc- 
curred after May 31 and yet have left the impression on Cap- 
tain Jack's mind that an interval had elapsed after the con- 
vention before he started. 

Draper says Captain Jack took "an active part in the Revo- 
lutionary War," declined promotions to remain with his 
company, with the members of which he was very popular; 
that he loaned his money to the State ; that "the close of the 
war left him poor" and that "his unrequited claims at the 
time of his death upon IS'orth Carolina amounted to 7,446 
pounds State currency." 

Isaac Alexander, Samuel Wilson and James Johnson also 

10 



146 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBUKG 

certified of their personal knowledge to the May convention 
and its action declaring independence. 

We have now brought to establish the truth of the Meck- 
lenburg Declaration of Independence contemporaneous rec- 
ord evidence, oral testimony and collateral circumstances, 
every species of proof known to human logic. The charge 
that it is a "myth" cannot stand before such showing. 



DECLAKATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 147 

[Rare old manuscript preserved in the Charleston, S. C, Library.] 

A MODERN POEM 
By "The Mecklenburg Censor." 

Published A. D. 1777. 



^'To the Electors of Mechlenburg. 

Gentlemen : The following poem came some time ago 
bj accident into my liands, iu wbicli 1 find some things that 
will probably offend many of my good friends in this county, 
yet I am of opinion that it contains many useful hints which 
ought not to be concealed from the public at this critical 
juncture. I have, therefore, thought it my duty as an impar- 
tial but sincere friend to the inhabitants of the county, to 
give you an opportunity of perusing it. 

''The Censor ridicules the confused and unthinking con- 
duct of the freemen of Mecklenburg at the election held last 
November with a severity that I thought unjustifiable, until 
I saw that the same spirit of insipid indifference prevailed 
at our last election, held the 10th day of March. 

''He also disapproves of the men you have chosen, and 
indeed I have great reason to believe from your conduct and 
public sentiment that you yourselves disapprove of your 
choice. For what other reason has induced you to hold elec- 
tions for field officers of the militia and justices of the peace 
— a power by our Congress very judiciously vested in the 
General Assembly ? And why the very particular instruc- 
tions you have given your Representatives ? If you were 
convinced that you had chosen honest men, you would surely 
trust something to their management. But, instead of this, 
you are so dubious of their integrity that you do everything 
yourselves, and send them only as messengers to inform the 
Assembly what your will and pleasure is. Strictly by your 



148 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

orders our Representatives must abide or do nothing. Quere ? 
Would not those instructions in writing, signed by a number 
of leading men in the county and sent to the Assembly by a 
trusty negro, answer the same end ? If you expected that 
your Representatives were to answer any purpose, would 
you choose out of that class of men, which you always sus- 
pected of corrupting your laws and Constitution, a lawyer? 
And one, too, whose interest (if he has any) lies in another 
► county; at any rate is not a freeholder in this; and never 
thinks proper to reside in it but when a court is held, at 
which he may scrape up a few pence, or when he would 
wheedle you to elect him a Representative, an honor which 
the people, where his interest lies, are not foolish enough to 
confer on him ? 

"I sincerely wish that all party feuds were extinguished 
in this county, as I verily believe that most of the people 
at present study more to mortify an opposite party than to 
promote the general welfare. 
"Your sincere friend, 

"March 30th, 1777." "The Editor." 



"A MODERN POEM. 



"When Mecklenburg's fantastic rabble, 
Renown'd for censure, scold and squabble. 
At Charlotte met in giddy council. 
To lay the Constitution's ground sill, 
By choosing men most learn'd and wise, 
Who clearly could with half shut eyes, 
See mill stones through, or spy a plot. 
Whether existed such or not ; 
Who always could at noon define 
Whether the sun or moon did shine. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 14^ 

And by philosophy knew whether 

It was clear or rainy weather; 

And sometimes, when their wits were nice, 

Could well distinguish men from mice. 

'Squire Subtle then to Sulky came, 
Sulky a lawyer mean in fame. 
'Sulky/ he said, 'my friend, pray hear, 
'I've things important for your ear. 
'D'ye mark yon silly rabble rout? 
'Who talk they know not what about; 
'Who by the nose, like colts are led. 
'Quere, isn't this our time to speed ? 
'You know, my friend, the vulgar views, 
'I guide to ill just as I choose. 
'By hypocritic cant and prayer, 
'To what I say I make them swear. 
'Lend me your hand, as sure as fate 
'I'll make you rich, I'll make you great, 
'And to the Congress strait I'll send you, 
'And every help I there will lend you. 
'But what I tell you still obey, 
'Lie, perjure, every trust betray ; 
'Let public good to private yield, 
'Until our empty bags are filled ; 
'Pay equal tax to brother Quirk, 
'He'll do your business in a jerk.' 

"Grim Sulky gave the applauding grin. 
And yields assent with all his chin. 
'To you and Quirk my soitl'L'll sell.' 
He every wrinkle then expands. 
And gives his thanks with lifted hands. 



150 DEFENCE OF THE xMECKLENBURG 

Into the Assembly now they rushed, 
With glowing hopes sublimely flush'd, 
Where Subtle thus harangues the crowd, 
With gesture strong and accent loud. 
'My countrymen, poor, senseless throng, 
'O'er whom I've watched with care so long; 
'Although I move in higher spheres, 
'Nor feel your little hopes and fears, 
'My godlike mind can deign to bend, 
'And sometimes to your needs attend. 
'I oft to heaven your case prefer, 
('And I have mighty interest there,) 
'By me it is the hosts on high, 
'Regard you with a pitying eye; 
'By me it is each civil right 
'Is not obliterated quite ; 
'My wisdom's power at council board 

* 'Redeemed you from a home-bred lord 
'Who else e'er this had stripped your skin, 

" 'As bare as good friend Sulky's chin ; 
'By me it is that learning lives, 
'By Sulky and by me it thrives, 
'Who on it have employ'd our stores 
'Of coppers even many scores, 
'At least one score by it I've lost, 
'If I said two I should not boast; 
'Since such my merit I demand 
'You choose me member out of hand ; 
'Else hence my aid I'll all withdraw 
'Nor mind you more than empty straw.' 

"He said : Then long-ehin'd Sulky rose, 
First wip'd his mouth, then blow'd his nose, 
And yawning wide he thus began: 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 151 

'Eemember, friends, I am the man, 
'Who in provincial council sat, 
'Debating much on schemes of State, 
'I great emoluments had brought, 
'By stress of lungs and stress of thought; 
'Had not mj compeers, empty sots, 
'Despised all my earthen pots, 
'You had not eat your victuals fresh, 
'But fitly season'd all your flesh, 
'Your beef, your mutton, pork and pullet, 
'Th' adored idols of my gullet. 
'A plan I fram'd by which the ocean 
('Conformed exactly to my notion) 
'Had yielded all her copious stores, 
'And poured her salt upon our shores. 
'A crock of w^ondrous shape and size, 
'Such ne'er was seen by human eyes, 
'Had o'er the beach its basin spread, 
'Forming a deep capacious bed, 
'Wherein the briny wave inurn'd 
'Should by the sun to salt be turn'd. 
'But jibing fools my crock withstood, 
'And sneer'd it to its native mud ; 
'While you, my friends, the boon lament, 
'The boon my project might have lent — 
'Now listen, Gentles, if you please, 
How I bemaul'd the Cherokees, 
'When arm'd all o'er in dread array 
'To Indiantown I bent my way, 
'Resistless through the village broke, 
'And much potatoes captive took. 
'To this the troops can witness bear, 
'Who of the captives had a share — 



162 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

'But more than this, have I not been 
'A patron to the college scheme? 
" 'Did not I here a school erect, 

'And with mj influence it protect? 

'In chimney corner I begot it, 

'And from my fruitful body brought it; 

'Its father, mother, midwife I, 

' 'Tis purely then my progeny — (all laugh) 

'Restrain, my friends, this noisy mirth ; 

'Squire Subtle saw the wondrous birth ; 

'And old reports the fact will prove, 

'For Pallas sprung from head of Jove. 

'My learning, too, you know is great, 

'In all the tricks and wiles of State ; 

'Able I am from any block, 

'To hew a police or a crock, 

'And any law can quickly make, 

'To hang a man or whip a snake, 

'To fix your right in land or pin,, 

'Or castigate you when you sin. 

'Since such my learning and great merit, 

'To any lawyer I'll refer it, 

'If I have not the justest claim, 

'To all the honors you can name. 

'Your votes you cannot fail to give, 

'If you have any sense alive ; 

'And if you don't by G I swear, 

'You're fools too great for earth to bear, 
'And Subtle shall with book and bell, 
'Soon pray you all to hell.' 

"The Sheriff now with awful voice. 
Had signified the people's choice ; 
Old Subtle heard himself proclaim'd, 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 153 

And Sulky, too, with Sharp Shears nam'd ; 
His furious joy iii rapture breaks. 
And Sulky's chin in concern shakes. 
He draws his brother Quirk aside. 
And thus he pours th' exulting tide: 
'How happy now our scheme's on foot, 
'We could not wish a tittle to't; 
'Sharp Shears and Sulky well I knew, 
'As I direct will say or do. 
'I'll make them lie, and cringe, and swear, 
'And of the profits give you share ; 
'But this observe, when I'm displaced, 
('For so I must be, and disgraced,) 
'When e'er some meddling soul shall rise, 
'To ope the blinding vulgar eyes, 
'Unfold the selfish schemes I've built, 
'And trace my secret paths of gnilt 
'Then take my place, my steps pursue, 
'And plot for me, I plot for you ; 
'Shai'p Shears and Sulky will agree 
'To tool for you as well as me ; 
'The Charlotte trimmer, too, I ween, 
'At home will throw his interest in; 
'Come let us then to greatness soar, 
'The glittering prospect lies before: 
'We'll gain it soon, pursue, pursue ; 
'The happy goal is full in view.' 

"Quirk thought it best to check his pride, 
And thus the cautious knave replied : 
'Take care, my brother, how you steer; 
'Your sanguine rashness much I fear; 
'Sharp Shears and Sulky both may aid 
'If in the dark they are wisely led ; 



164 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

'But never let the blockheads know 

'Expressly what you mean to do; 

Tor if your secret they possess, 

'They'll spoil it by their emptiness, 

'Make such a bustle, such a rout, 

'The veriest fool may find it out. 

'Sharp Shears, fat head, can never span 

'The intricate intrigues we plan, 

'Nor guide with such a steady grace, 

'As long can cheat the populace ; 

'The shallow current soon will show 

'The filthy trash that lies below. 

'Sulky, you know, how false his boast 

'Of feats performed on Indian coasts, 

'Of Indian towns to pieces shaken, 

'And huge potatoes captive taken. 

'You know his scheme of marsh-mud kettle, 

'Made like himself of feeble mettle, 

'And twenty things that prove the fool 

'Is only fit to serve as tool. 

'By acting thus secure and sly, 

'We'll never at their mercy lie ; 

'They can't in weakness or in pet 

'Expose us to the public hate, 

'If they should fail us we'll others get, 

'Will serve our purposes as fit. 

'If any should reflect upon us, 

'We'll stop their mouths with empty honours; 

'The lucrative engrossing gold 

'Our children and ourselves will hold — 

'And if at length we be detected, 

'When we've a mass of wealth collected, 

'We'll try corruption's potent force, 

'To keep us steady in our course, 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 155 

'And drive the rabble into measures 
*By distribution of their treasures.' 

^ 'Quere/ cried Subtle, in a transport, 

'If you are not the very man for it ; 

'Most wisely you the plot have laid, 

"And I will act just as you've said. 

'Oh, how my soul with rapture swells, 

'When on the pleasing thought it dwells 

'Of holding rank 'bove vulgar fate, 

'And supping mush and milk of State; 

'Of giving to the rabble law, 

'While low they cringe with humble awe; 

'Seeing my grounds by negroes till'd, 

'And all my chests with dollars fill'd, 

'A blaze of glory round my head, 

'My house a little palace made; 

'My fair-haired son no more you'll see, 

'Affrighted, climb a hickory tree, 

'But arm'd with power and mighty sway, 

'Compel the county to obey. 

'Adieu, dear Quirk, I must be gone, 

'Still bear in mind what we've begun.' 

"My countrymen, I pray you, think, 

You're tottering on ruin's brink; 

Oh, think, e'er long 'twill be too late, 

I tremble for the birth of fate. 

E'er long you'll find the Squire and Quirk, 

More absolute than Moor or Turk, 

And cause you more excpiisite pains, 

Than tvrant Georae's c^allins: chains. 

Be wise, my friends, and choose such men 

As will your freedom still maintain, ^ 



156 DEFENCE OF THE MECKLENBURG 

Make private ends to public yield, 
Contend, and never quit the field, 
Until your rights are all secure, 
By lavs^s and ordinances pure; 
Mark this, nor need advice again, sirs, 
Siml'r to the Mecklenburg Censor's. 
"Finis." 



"Characters and notes of information: 

"(1) 'Squire Subtle — Hezekiah Alexander, Esq., a shrewd, sensible, 
cunning man, who had deservedly great influence in the county, having 
been for many years a magistrate, always taking an active part in the 
direction and management of public affairs. 

"(2) Sulky — Waightstill Avery, Esq., a lawyer of no very considerable 
eminence in his profession. He formerly made his home at Hezekiah 
Alexander's, but since the Courts were shut and all procedure of law 
were interrupted by the breach between Great Britain and America, he 
has been almost continually engaged in the public service. 

"(3) Quirk — John McKnitt Alexander, Esq., brother to Hezekiah 
Alexander, and equally active in public matters. He was delegated to 
the Provincial Congress, and since the new Constitution was introduced 
has been chosen member of the Senate. 

"(4) The person here alluded to (in the mouth of 'Squire Subtle, 
called a home-bred lord,) is Col. Thomas Polk, who is something like the 
novus homo of the Romans, having risen to wealth and honor from a 
state of poverty and meanness. He was formerly member of Assembly a 
number of years, and has been much employed in public services, in all 
of which he was ever mindful of his own private emolument. Some 
jealousy has subsisted between him and Mr. Alexander, their views 
having not always co-incided. 

"(5) Mr. Avery has received from nature a long chin, which she has 
left almost entirely beardless. 

" ( 6 ) Mr. Alexander once brought up from Charlesto\vn a parcel of 
coppers, which he distributed in the county. He is charged by some with 
being too parsimonious. 

"(7) Mr. Avery made a motion in the convention concerning the 
erecting of salt works on the seacoast of their State. Whether he pro- 
posed such a basin as is here described I can not tell. A resolution, 
however, was made that the salt works should be erected, and Mr. Avery 
was appointed one of the commissioners. 

"(8) Mr. Avery was out in the expedition against the Cherokees last 
year." 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



15T 



Notes 9 and 10 of the manuscript are mutilated. Of note 9 the onlj 
words legible are "did not see fit to grant" [torn] "for an academy,'^ a 
reference, obviously, to the charter of Queen's Museum College, which 
the king disallowed, or rather, repealed by royal proclamation. 

Note 10. [Torn] "Robert Irwin, Esq., formerly member of provincial 
[torn] now one of the commons of this county. Some bills for services 
[torn] the public fell under his cognizance, and some of the charges 
appearing exorbitant, he would not admit them. For reducing these he 
was honored with the name Sharp Shears. His character is very good. 

"(11) The election has been spoken of [torn] held last November. In 
the election held the 10th of March last Mr. Hezekiah Alexander did 
not sit up himself as a candidate. 

" ( 12 ) The person intended by the Charlotte trimmer is Mr. Jeremiah 
McCafferty, merchant in this town, a man of fortune and influence, but 
not a zealous partisan, for which reason, perhaps, he is called a trimmer. 

"(13) In the Indian war last fall, in some alarm or other, Mr. Alex- 
ander's son, it is said, did actually climb a hickory tree. He was called 
by way of derision Forty-foot, as though, forsooth, he had jumped so 
high up the tree when he saw danger threatening." 



my 10 1908 



MAY IS 1908 




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